


give me grief

by chirospasms



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Adam and Langa's self destructive habits, Anal Sex, Blowjobs, Dubious content but the narrator is unreliable, M/M, langa and adam is the main thing here okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:42:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29307474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chirospasms/pseuds/chirospasms
Summary: Langa wishes he was wrong about the most likely reason Adam has taken an interest in a widowed woman like his mother.Or maybe he doesn't.No. No, he definitely does. He's got to stop thinking these things.the one where adam starts dating langa's mother and langa regrettably still lets him get in his pants
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa's Mother/Shindo Ainosuke | Adam, Hasegawa Langa/Shindo Ainosuke | Adam, Implied Kikuchi Tadashi/Shindo Ainosuke | Adam
Comments: 79
Kudos: 255





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Did not edit this at all except to go back and forth with the 'find and replace' feature trying to decide whether or not I wanted to use "ADAM" or "Adam" for about five minutes. And it was largely written late in the night, so please forgive typos but also DO point out huge mistakes so I can feel burning hot shame as I edit them out and act like they could not have been avoided...
> 
> Lmao. Anyway. I don't think this will have tooooo many chapters, sorry to say! But we'll see how it goes. I've been known to get tangled up in things. On the one hand, I can see this plot getting convoluted. On the other, I just want Langa to get fucked And Feel Real Guilty About It
> 
> Enjoy, and hopefully I'll have the next chapter out soon, because this one is extremely lacking in the things that are going to make it rated E

Exhaustion had become a familiar sight on Langa’s mother’s face, even if she took careful measures to make herself up and appear composed for her son’s sake. Seeing her so worn-out had been the driving force in Langa seeking out a job, and it didn’t hurt that his recent endeavors in skateboarding meant several brand new friendships for her to perk up over. 

He decides it’s fine to open up to her about Reki and the others, less fine to bring up S or Adam and how he’d been lucky not to break bones or crack his head open on the pavement while racing against him. It’s already difficult enough to placate her and keep the worry off of her expression when he comes home with new cuts and scrapes. 

Difficult, but not impossible. Things lately have been… Good. A little worry is normal. A dash of exhaustion is fine. These are things he can handle, she can handle. The normal outcome and therefore the ideal is that she’ll come in with just one weary sigh as she slips off her work shoes and then immediately brighten upon the sight of Langa, home and safe and stationed at the kitchen counter, dutifully preparing the both of them some much deserved and welcome dinner.

So it’s kind of a new—well, not exactly that, but it’s been a _while_ , given their circumstances, and he can’t blame his mother for it—thing when she practically dances into the entryway, not a trace of all-too-familiar fatigue on her face or in her manner. Langa usually waits for her to be the one to start these conversations outside of mentioning what’s cooking, if only to get a gauge on how tired she might be, but this time he can’t help but to quirk a brow as he turns away from the chicken on the stovetop that he may or may not have been idly pushing with a chopstick for no reason other than to watch it skate around the curved edges of the pan.

“You’re in a good mood,” he says, calmer than the curiosity piquing inside of him.

His mother, who he swears had been humming just a moment ago as she’d set her bag down is suddenly quiet, like maybe she’d forgotten she wasn’t totally alone in her apparent joy.

“Ahh…” 

They stare at each other for a moment too long. It’s not uncommon for his mother to give herself some time to think of how she wants to approach a question or a statement, especially if it’s something she’s been worrying about, but the silence drags, and Langa’s got no clue why she’d be hesitating when she’d been so happy just a moment ago.

“Is… Something wrong?”

“No, no. Just thinking, aren’t I a lucky mother to have such an attentive son?” She gives a nervous laugh, removing her cardigan before sidling up next to Langa to observe the pan. “And one that’s such a good cook, too! I could smell it from outside the door.”

He glances back at the pan. It’s nothing special. The chicken is pretty plain looking—maybe even slightly under seasoned, if he’s being really honest, and the vegetables are going a bit dark and too soft from being on the heat too long.

She doesn’t give him time to dwell on it, gently bumping her hip into his. 

“But if it stays there any longer, it’s going to burn, hm? Come on, let’s eat.”

“Right…”

* * *

A few minutes later finds them both at the table, quietly eating. The meal is as average as he’d expected it would be, but his mom had spent the moments after her first bites praising it anyway. He can tell it’s empty—only genuine insofar as the fact that she’s his mother and finds most of what he does to be impressive or endearing—but he doesn’t press even when it’s clear afterwards as she’s shifting in her seat and fumbling with her chopsticks that she’s got more on her mind than bland chicken, not until one of them drops and clatters on her plate.

He parrots his earlier question.

“Is something wrong?”

“No!” She laughs, picking up the fallen chopstick only to drop it again. “Maybe.”

Langa straightens, fixing her with a serious stare.

“What is it?”

“Well… It’s not that something is _wrong_ …”

He relaxes, but only a little. “That’s a relief.”

“I just… Langa, I have something important to ask you.”

“What?”

“If…” She trails off. She’s given up on rescuing the chopstick, instead looking off to the side. The trajectory of her gaze isn't unknown to Langa; he can tell without even confirming it for himself that she’s staring at his father’s face where his picture sits on the dining table, always close as if he’s right there to eat alongside them. She takes even more time to think over what she wants to say, and then finally speaks up again.

“I love your father, even now, you know. I don’t want you to think I’m moving on and abandoning his memory. But… Somebody asked me out recently, and I accepted. We had a lunch date today.”

“Oh…”

He’s not sure how to feel about that.

“It was… Nice. Not the same, of course, but… Nice. He said that he’d like to see me again. And, honestly… I’d like to see him again, too. But…”

“But you won’t feel right about it if you don’t know what I think first.”

Her lips quirk. Not into a smile, but into something unsure. “Yes, that’s about right.”

Now, Langa looks at the picture, too. He misses the man smiling back at him. He knows his mom does, too. It makes his heart ache to think about his picture resting on another surface that isn’t this one while they eat dinner, perhaps with another chair set at the table for somebody else. Replacing his father.

But then… He finds his gaze drawn to the snowboard. Had he not traded in snowboarding for skateboarding, recently? It wasn’t the same, the comparison, but it was the closest thing he had to understanding his mother’s feelings. 

“It… Stings to think about.”

His mother looks disappointed and understanding all at once.

“But,” he continues, watching her expression shift, “I think it’s fine. I’m old enough to know that you’re not trying to replace him. You just want to feel normal again, right? And I want you to be happy, so…”

She smiles. 

“Ahh, I really am such a lucky mother.”

* * *

Langa doesn’t think much about his mother’s love life after that. For one, in typical teenage boy fashion, he doesn’t really want to imagine it at all. Second, he’s got other things to worry about. School. Work. Skateboarding. 

The police getting involved the last time meant that Reki and he hadn’t been sneaking off to participate in or watch any races lately; the dust hadn’t quite settled yet. That didn’t mean that they couldn’t still skate for the hell of it and practice together, though. He still had a lot to learn, even if Reki often loudly complained about how he was starting to run out of things to teach Langa, what with how quickly he had been grasping new concepts and moves. 

And Langa was _desperate_ to be taught. In a private part of his mind, he knows his desperation for knowledge comes with a guilty weight. He wants to skate alongside Adam again. Even after making a halfhearted promise to his friend that he would do no such thing. 

They hadn’t gotten to finish their race, though. He can’t get it out of his head. 

When he’s not physically skateboarding, he’s thinking about doing it. Alone. With Reki. With everybody else. With Adam especially. That’s just how his mind has been working lately. 

When he wakes up, his morning routine is rushed just so he has ample time to put his wheels to the pavement on the way to the school. He’d even started paying more attention in physics just in the hopes that words like “momentum” and “velocity” would make something in his performance click together. Having to say goodbye to Reki and go home is a thing he does with reluctance, especially now that his mother has found more than one evening occupied as of late and he hasn’t had to worry about cooking for both of them. When he’s in bed and meant to be sleeping, he’s scrolling on his phone through videos of pros and amateurs alike, hoping to glean something new for himself.

Tonight is another one of those nights laid up in his bed with phone in hand. His mother hadn’t gotten in yet, had told him not to wait up for her in a recent text that he didn’t want to think about the implications of. 

If her night was special, then his was even more so. In his endless scrolling through videos he’s already watched, he comes across something new.

Well, not _new_. It had been posted long before he’d even discovered a love for skateboarding. New to him, though, despite unmistakable familiarity.

It’s a short, blurry video taken in a flurry of excitement. Grainy, too, perhaps taken on a slightly less advanced phone than the likes of the one in his hand. There’s no missing that mask, though, that hairstyle, that outfit. 

Adam doesn’t do anything particularly special in it. He rounds the corner so fast that it’s a wonder the camera had even managed to capture him passing by. It follows him down the road as far as it can, zooming in when he gets too far, and then he’s gone. The middle of the video is full of nothing but cheers and chatter. He can make out the voice of who he presumes to have been filming it, saying something about how it’s been a while since Adam had passed and that whoever he’d been skating against was probably a smear on the ground. It ends with somebody saying “yeah, this race is over.” 

That’s it. That’s all it is. There’s nothing he can learn from it other than the fact that Adam really has always been a monster on the course, and he’d already known that. 

Langa finds himself replaying it anyway, though, stopping it and going back to the beginning when it reaches the point where Adam is no longer in the frames. He mutes it after a few replays, tired of the crowd ruining his concentration on Adam’s speedy movement, and plays it again.

And again.

And _again_.

His own sharp inhale is too loud in the quiet of his bedroom. It’s what makes him realize that it’s not just his eyes that are focused on the video. 

Shoving his free hand underneath the waistband of the sweats he’s wearing to bed is so automatic that he doesn’t even have time to be shocked over his own actions. He doesn’t do this sort of thing very often to begin with, so it’s easier to just go with it before it becomes more of a problem. That last thing he needs is to be pent-up with _this_ kind of energy on top of his current fixation on skateboarding.

And a very strong fixation it is, apparently. This is just about skateboarding, that’s right. It’s normal for adrenaline to cause this sort of reaction. Never mind how his heart hadn’t been beating like this for any of the other videos he’d been watching.

He’s not even annoyed by the fact that he has to keep restarting the video with every couple of clumsy strokes. Not even thinking about how ridiculous it is that he goes out of his way to do it at all instead of letting his imagination do the work to bring up something, _anything_ else. 

The hand wrapped around his cock has gotten uncomfortably sticky with pre-cum by the time his grip slips a bit on his phone and his thumb accidentally hits pause on a frame that is surprisingly in-focus despite the video’s quality. Adam is front and center, having just come around the corner, and almost looks as if he’s coming right for the crowd because of it. Langa can’t make out the expression on the man’s face, but he imagines it’s a self-assured smile.

His hips jerk involuntarily. He hadn’t realized he was that close—

So close— 

He can hear his breathing getting shakier and pitching high—

And the front door. He can hear the front door. 

The phone smacks against his chin as he drops it out of shock. He winces and quickly shakes his head to push it away from his skin, onto his pillow where it slides down to the sheets while he slaps his hand over his mouth and comes with a muffled cry just as his mother makes the announcement that she’s home, loud enough to be heard but not so loud that it would wake him if he were sleeping.

He _wishes_ he had been sleeping. 

* * *

His mom stops him from racing out the door a few mornings after the— _incident_. If he doesn’t put a name to it, it never happened. She’s stepping out of her bedroom with a brush in hand that she pulls through some hair strands as she calls out to him where he’s shoving his shoes on at the door. 

“Yeah?”

“If… If I invited that man over for dinner tonight…”

Langa tries not to let how not enthused he is by that idea show on his face. 

“Uhm…”

“You wouldn’t even have to cook. I’d come home early. I don’t have to invite him at all, really! I just thought maybe you’d like to get the chance to meet him now, rather than later when things might be more serious… And, you know, he’s actually younger than I am, so maybe there’d be something in common and it might be fun for _both_ of us–”

It already seems pretty serious, given how much time she’s spent out lately. Given how she’s talking about inviting him to their home. Langa shrugs, turning to face and open the door now that his shoes are on. He wants her to be happy. It’s not his place to act like _he’s_ the parent here and prevent her from doing what she wants.

“I guess… That’d be fine.” 

* * *

“That’s not fine!” Reki exclaims when they’ve finally got the time to sit down and talk about it at lunch. He’d honestly rather be spending it on his skateboard after wolfing down his meal, but instead he knows it’s good that they have moments like these where they can be still and just… Exist in each other’s company. 

“Not to overstep my boundaries, but don’t you think it’s too sudden..?”

Langa swallows a mouthful of rice. The taste is fine, but the grains might as well be rocks for how tight his throat feels. 

“I guess… I don’t know. It is. But it isn’t. It’s not like he passed away and we immediately moved here, you know. It’s… Been a while now. Between that, us moving here, mom getting a job, me getting into this school, to right now… And even if it hadn’t been… If she’s ready for it now, then it’s out of my hands.”

“Well, yeah, but… Ahhh, I don’t know, that whole situation seems really awkward!” Reki heaves a sigh. Langa can tell he wishes he had more comforting words at his disposal. He’s got a good heart. “I hope he’s a nice guy, at least? Maybe he’ll know a thing or two about skateboarding! That’d be cool.”

“If he knows anything useful, then he’d probably know about S, too. I don’t want to think about my mom dating some guy who has been on the sidelines there.”

Reki considers that and snorts. Langa grins in return. 

“Yeah, you’re right. That’d be weird. Ooh, but what if he wasn’t just a fan? What if he raced? That’d be cool.”

He thinks about the sorts of folks he’s seen race outside of himself, Reki, and their usual company. More often than not, they’re cocky and over-the-top. Rude. Not very pleasant to women. He makes a face that he’s not even aware of until Reki’s laughter starts anew.

“I don’t want to think about that, either.”

“Ha! But it still might be kind of cool.”

* * *

It is not cool.

It is not cool. 

It is not cool. 

It is really, seriously, **not** cool. At all.

True to her word, his mother had come home early. 

He’d helped her cook a simple but nutritious and delicious meal even though she’d insisted upon doing the work herself. He’d opened up some windows to get the smell of cooking fish and garlic out of the kitchen. He’d sat around and done homework while she went in and out of her room and the bathroom, fussing with her clothing and her hair.

It had been a little funny, and a lot nice, to see her getting all flustered in the best way. It’d been a while since he’d seen her worked up over something that wasn’t death or finances or any other number of negative things. 

And then, the doorbell had rung, and she’d clapped her hands together and put on a bright smile. It faltered only for long enough to send a meaningful, halfway apologetic look at Langa, and came bouncing right back when he stood up to go and show her that he was willing to join her in greeting her date at the door.

Langa almost didn’t think anything of the man on the other side of it, other than that he looked overdressed for their small home and this occasion, and that his hair was a peculiar shade. Not until he noticed that the man had barely even looked at his mother. No. That man’s eyes, they were glued on _him_. They narrowed, just a little, focused, before he evidently composed himself and greeted the woman he was here for. The hair, the height, the frame, the voice that tumbled out of that smirking mouth as it said Langa’s mother’s name...

“Come in, come in!” She pulls Langa back a bit so that the man can enter, gesturing for him to get comfortable and remove his shoes while she closes the door behind him. She’s a ball of nervous energy, flitting right back to Langa’s side when she’s finished and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. 

“This is my son, Langa. Langa, this is…”

“Shindo Ainosuke.”

Langa swallows down the lump in his throat. “A–”

Adam offers a placid smile, gently correcting Langa before he can slip up. “ _Ainosuke_. I don’t mind you calling me that. I can’t expect too much formality from the son of somebody I’m dating, hm? You have to have your rebellious teenage phase, and all…”

Langa’s mother laughs, playfully jostling him with the arm still around his shoulders before finally releasing him. He stands perfectly still, statue-like and in shock, but manages to at least put on a weak smile in an attempt to match her enthusiasm.

“Oh, no. He’s a good boy. I’m sure he’ll be on his best behavior.”

Ainosuke—no, that name is _never_ going to stick. It’s _Adam_. Adam smiles again, looking very amused.

“Either way, it’s nice to finally meet you, Langa.” Is it just Langa that hears that strange drawl as Adam says his name? He glances over to his mother. She smiles right back at him, but not for long. Her attention is drawn back to Adam. To the bouquet he pushes in her direction. “And you! You are looking so lovely that I fear my choice in flowers is too dull in comparison.”

They are not roses. Langa doesn’t know their names, what they might represent, but they are not roses.

Langa’s not really listening to anything else that is said. Adam’s looking at his mom, but somehow it still feels like the man’s gaze is locked onto him. It's not like he couldn't have known that Langa would be here. His mother is a chatty woman, she wouldn't just not mention she had a son to somebody she was dating, or what his name was. Right now, she babbles something about needing to put the flowers in a vase, something about how the kitchen is just right over here— 

“I’m sorry that I didn’t bring you anything,” Adam says to him as his mother turns her back. She’s still within earshot. He’s not even bothering to lower his voice. He’s calm about all of this. Happy to put up the act that they’ve never met before in their lives. Of course he would be; he's had plenty of time to prepare, hasn't he? “Your mother didn’t tell me much about your interests beforehand, and I doubt a boy like you would want flowers.” That smirk again. He starts following after his date. Langa hates that he has to trail right at his heels like this. “So what _do_ you like, Langa?”

He sounds genuinely interested. Perhaps a little _too_ interested. Langa forces himself to shoulder past him to help his mother retrieve a vase from the top-most shelf in one of the kitchen cabinets and set out dishes. 

“Oh!” She sounds so _happy_ that this man is taking the time to ask about him. That he really might want to properly get to know both mother and son. “Yes, Langa, go on and tell him all about your skateboarding! I thought it might be best if he learned things about you straight from the source! I don’t really know a thing about that, skateboarding...” 

It’s going to be a long night. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, this chapter iiiiiis... Totally unedited! Feel free to poke fun at mistakes.
> 
> This thing's getting out of hand, too, wuh-woh. I can't believe I seriously thought I was just going to write a oneshot and move on... Still! I'm thinking two or three more chapters? Maybe even just one particularly long one. As much as I'd love for this to be an unending saga of Adam grooming Langa into perfection, even I have to impose limits on myself, lmao...

It _is_ a long night from the very start.

Not even five minutes into the meal, Adam puts his elbows on the table where Langa’s father’s picture might have rested were it not for the other man’s intrusion into the Hasegawa household. He murmurs an apology about the rude table manners, but his mom is completely unconcerned because she sees that he’s doing it in order to lean forward, palm draped over knuckles and looking oh-so-invested in what her son has to say. 

Langa has no idea how she can be apathetic about it; he’d been shocked when she set the picture on a shelf before Adam had arrived. Shouldn’t any new man know exactly what they were encroaching upon? He eyes his father’s picture now, internally apologizing to the man for not having a say in any of this. Adam’s head tilts and forces its way back into his view. 

“At your age, I also did a lot of skateboarding. If I hadn’t grown up and gotten other responsibilities, I think I’d still be doing it today. It was my favorite pastime– no, more than that, I was pretty obsessed.”

Yeah. Langa can imagine.

“You don’t say,” he replies, keeping his tone disaffected. Admittedly, though… He wants to know more. Not about the half-lie that Adam is weaving, but the truth beneath it. How much did he skate to get as good as he was now—had he learned tricks with ease, had there been a learning curve? Had he really always been so reckless? 

“I’d love to see your footwork. Maybe I’d have some pointers. You say you used to snowboard, so your form must be very interesting… ”

He hates that he can’t help but to mentally perk up at the idea of receiving pointers. From Adam, no less, the very man he’s aiming to beat. Who better to learn all of the most valuable tricks from? He’d simmer in all of the new knowledge and do everything Adam could but _better_. 

He vaguely recalls when the man had inched his hands down his legs, hovering even though it was clear he’d wanted to grab Langa’s calf and put his foot in the right position, tell him just how to shift his weight. No, not even vaguely; he recalls it with extreme clarity because he’d moved his foot around the next time he’d gotten on his board to practice ollies and at some point something had snapped right into place like a puzzle piece and it had gotten so much _easier_. He’d promptly wondered if it was exactly where Adam had been planning to place it for him. It probably had been. 

He wants to know how the man does that. Pinpoints those problem areas and rectifies the mistake. He wants to have all of his weaknesses splayed out and ironed away so that the next time he’s on his board, the process is as fast and smooth as gliding down snow covered mountain sides and Adam doesn’t stand a chance—

It’s not like he’s about to say any of that, nor show it on his face.

“Mh.”

He can feel his mother’s foot kick into his shin from under the table. He startles, just a little. He sees it written all over her face that she desperately wants this whole thing to work out.

“Oh. Ah. Yeah. I could show you, sometime…”

“Then, it’s a date,” Adam declares with a faint laugh. 

Langa glances at his mom. Waiting to see her frown or her eyes bulge, something. But she’s just _smiling_. Even if this whole situation weren’t like _this_ , shouldn’t she at least be putting the brakes on this man getting so familiar with her son when they’re not even “serious” yet?

Shouldn’t she see that the only thing Adam has been “serious” about since entering their home is Langa himself? How can it be normal or fine that the man has all these words for Langa, and none for her?

She carries on as if nothing is amiss. 

“Langa always gets back from school earlier than I get home from work. If you wanted to stop in on him one day for something like that, you could stick around for another dinner afterwards, it would only be a couple of hours… I could grab something along the way so we can eat as soon as possible, or—Langa usually cooks for us, you know.” 

Langa’s head whips around to better face his mother at the bold offer. Not just in giving Adam the okay to come over again sometime before this night has even concluded on a positive note, but in freely letting Adam skim the details of his life and in implying that he was just going to willingly cook for some stranger, not-stranger. She is entirely too giving. Too trusting.

Adam coos with interest. 

“Oh? The young man of the house does the cooking? How dutiful.”

Of course, his mother can’t help but to tease.

“He’s two parts teenage boy, one part housewife. I’m just glad that part cleans and picks up after himself.”

“Housewife,” Adam echoes, and Langa thinks that tone is a little more _interested_ than amused or incredulous. It sends an uncomfortable prickle right underneath his skin. But Adam laughs, then, and his mother does, too, and takes whatever expression is playing on Langa’s face as the typical response of a teenager being teased.

At least after that his mother goes from how nice it is to have a clean house to something about her work, and then about Adam’s work, and Langa can sit back, eat, and pretend to listen without having to contribute much himself.

_Sort of_ pretend to listen. He doesn’t want to admit to himself that he’s listening all too carefully, or that he’d seen Adam look a bit disappointed when the conversation had drifted to such normal, everyday topics. 

* * *

His mother walks Adam out the door when it’s (finally, finally) time for him to leave, leaving Langa on the other side of it. He almost wants to press his ear to it, look through the peephole, but the son in him does not remotely want to know if they are flirting or kissing each other good night out there.

There’s another part, though, that wants to see what Adam does, what he’s like when— 

Ugh. He steps well away from the door, awkwardly lingering in the living room as he waits for his mother to return inside.

When she gets in, she whirls so that her back is to the closed door, fixing Langa with a smile. He guesses it’s supposed to be tentative and questioning by the way her eyebrows raise a little as if distantly goading him into speaking, but she can’t hide the dreamy look on her face beyond that. He’s reminded of girls at his school, trying and failing to hide their embarrassed expressions when their friends poke and prod about crushes. 

“Well? What did you think? He’s nice, right?”

Langa wraps an arm around his middle, still feeling awkward. Even more so when he remembers how Adam had grabbed him at the S race in much the same spot. He quickly drops the arm, drumming his fingers absentmindedly against the side of his thigh instead just to have an outlet for this anxiety he’s feeling.

The _Shindo_ he’d seen tonight _had_ been… Nice enough, he supposes, all discomfort from a few of his words and mannerisms aside. 

What could he say to his mother about the _Adam_ he knew beyond this quaint dinner, though? That the Adam from a few weeks ago would not have batted a lash if Reki’s skull was worn down on the pavement? That the Adam from just a little while after that had been content to treat her very own son like a ragdoll as they’d competed in a dangerous race against one another? That racing against him had almost gotten him in trouble with the police? That, not too many nights ago, there had even been a version of Adam on his phone screen that he’d— 

No. He couldn’t say any of that. It would be outing himself just as much as it would be outing Adam, and…

Selfishly, he doesn’t want to give up what he has. 

Skateboarding. S. This secret connection to Adam.

He takes too long to mull his words over, apparently, because his mom frowns and steps closer, putting a hand to his cheek. 

“Langa… I know, I’m asking a lot of you… But he wasn’t so bad, right? If we kept seeing each other, would it be a problem for you..?” She strokes down his cheek, pats his chest and smiles in the way where he knows she’s thinking she’s glad to have a tall, sturdy son, because she’s always full of compliments for him. “I know he’s younger, maybe that’s strange—but he’s kind and responsible. And you know I’m not the sort to care about this sort of thing, but he’s… He’s wealthy, too. He could be a big help to us. To me. In a lot of ways. And I like him, I do. No matter what happens, I’m not going to expect you to think of him as anything other than the man your mother is dating, but I don’t want you to hate him or resent me, either.”

He’s not trying to ignore her, but this topic is a sidewalk of broken glass that he doesn’t know how to navigate. Resent her? Never. Hate Adam? That one, he’s not sure on what the answer is.

She starts to look more and more concerned. She gives one more pat to his chest and steps back with a strained smile. 

“I’ll think of something to let him know it’s better that we don’t see ea–”

“No,” Langa finally says, grabbing for her hands. He’s got to put on a more assuring face for her, just like she’s done for him so many times. “Mom. I– it’s fine, really. He was nice. He said he liked skateboarding, too, so… That’s something. If you want to keep seeing him, then…”

“Langa… Thank you. I don’t know what I was so worried about. As always, I have to think that I have the best son in the world.”

He’s not so sure about that. 

* * *

Days go by. 

Normal days, aside from his mother bringing up Adam with increasing frequency now that they’ve been acquainted and it doesn’t feel like a secret she’s got to keep.

It’s always Shindo-san this, Shindo-san that, and even just “Ainosuke” from time to time, though she’s always quick to giggle and correct herself. It’s weird to him that they’re already that close. Just how much time does a wealthy, busy man like Adam have for an equally, if not more so, busy woman? Will that time disappear the moment S reopens, if ever? 

Langa has been agonizing over how their relationship even happened. He’s too embarrassed to outright ask his mother, doesn’t want to seem too invested or even take the chance at accidentally sounding annoyed and upsetting her if he says it out loud.

It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Surely. Adam must have been watching closely. Must have used bizarre connections or a hell of a lot of social media to figure out where his mother worked. All to get close to _him_.

It was creepy, right? He wants to bring it up with Reki.

But… He doesn’t. Hasn’t even mentioned that Adam was the one who’d shown up at their door. It feels like something he should keep to himself.

Thankfully, Reki hasn’t asked. 

Not until now, at least, after school as they hang out and take a break from trying out some outrageous trick they’d seen online that they really should have already broken a bone or two over by now. 

“Oh! Man, I almost forgot, didn’t your mom have a guy over? You never brought it up again. Was it that bad? Good?”

Langa takes a long sip from his water bottle, stalling. He wipes his lips off on the back of his hand when he’s finished, avoiding eye contact with an overly curious Reki.

“Uhm…”

“Uhm?”

“He was all right.”

Reki leans away from him on the bench they’ve taken their respite on as if in shock, and then leans forward again, impatient.

“What? That’s _all_ you’ve got to say about it? Come on, Langa. Who was he? Was he nice? Is she gonna see him again, does the guy have your seal of approval?”

Adam. Yes and no. Yes, in a way, and Langa will have to see him again, too. 

The answers would be so easy if that was all he had to say and Reki would just accept it. The moment he says “Adam”, though, it’s all going to go south. 

“Just… Some guy. Some businessman.” Or something. Adam had seemed like he had his fingers in a lot of pies, going on about some environmental committee and monetary contributions. Politics. Business. Anywhere charm and money had power. “He was okay, that’s all. They’re still going out.”

Reki gives him a good, hard stare. For a moment, Langa thinks he’s going to press the issue, but then he breaks out into a smile.

“Nobody we’d see at S, then, huh?” He laughs too loud, and that’s why Langa flinches a little. Definitely. “Well! That’s probably for the best. I’m glad it seems like he’s not giving you any trouble. I hope things work out.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

* * *

He can’t _not_ notice the car parked outside of his home when he finally parts ways with Reki. 

It’s the same one that had skidded to a stop in front of Adam and him on that night their race had been interrupted. If he squints, he’s pretty sure he can see somebody sitting in the driver’s seat.

What’s more plain to see is Adam himself leaning against the passenger side door. He’s dressed too-formally once again and smoking a cigarette, looking up at nothing in particular. He must hear the sound of Langa’s wheels rolling over the asphalt, because he turns his head in his direction before Langa has even thought about maybe getting off and quietly sneaking inside before the man has noticed.

Being that he _has_ been noticed, Langa rolls right along until he’s close enough that Adam’s next exhale of cigarette smoke makes him cough as he kicks his board upwards to hold onto. He really wishes his mother had warned him ahead of time, that today was apparently the date they’d settled on for their second bout of dinner. The surprise is unwelcome.

The way Adam’s gaze lingers on his board before it travels back up to his face isn’t so unwelcome, though. Langa wonders if the other is really going to have anything to teach him, here and now, dressed to the nines like that...

“My bad,” Adam says after some time, as if he hadn’t blown the smoke at him on purpose, and lets the unfinished cigarette fall to the ground. He crushes it under heel and then surprises Langa by picking it up again. The car window rolls down just enough for an ashtray to come into view. The man in front of him is nonplussed, dropping the cigarette butt into it before the ashtray disappears and the window rolls up again. It’s completely unnerving to know that they’re being watched closely enough for somebody to have an ashtray at Adam’s beck and call without so much as a tap on the glass. “I usually reserve these for special occasions. Bad for my image and health, but they help to calm the nerves…”

Langa isn’t taking the bait. Adam lets the silence crawl on for a bit, smiling all the while.

“Hmm. Yes, that cool exterior is very nerve-wracking…”

Finally, Langa sighs, hunching a bit to look in at the driver of the car, the owner of the mysterious hand that had collected trash without a word. The man inside does not look back at him, and Adam is quick to step to the side to block Langa’s view.

“Pay him no mind. Just my… Driver.”

“He’s going to wait around for all this time?” For his mother? All through dinner, too, alone in this car? It seems excessive. The money in the job must be good, to be heeding Adam’s whims so thoroughly.

“Something like that.”

Langa quirks a brow. 

“Okay…” He switches the hip his board is leaned against, not sure where to go with this. He wants to ask if Adam can give him those pointers he mentioned. He also would kind of rather die from guilt, because he’d literally _just_ left Reki and it’s strange to think about willingly chasing after Adam in this way right now.

More importantly. Shouldn’t he be asking harder hitter questions if he’s going to ask any at all? Like how and why the man is pursuing his mother? The fact that they only come to his mind when he thinks about his guilt is telling, and only makes him feel guiltier.

It’s not like they’re going to have that kind of confrontation in the middle of the street in the neighborhood he lives in, though. It’s a viable excuse. He grips his board a little harder as if trying to grip that excuse, too.

Adam notices. 

“May I see that?” He’s already holding a hand out, gesturing for the board. Reluctantly, Langa hands it over, trying not to think of absurd thoughts and impossible what-if scenarios like Adam snapping the board over his thigh and driving off.

The man likes skateboarding alongside him too much to do something like that, right?

He shuffles in place while Adam marvels over the wheels, turning them in the unusual directions they’re able to rotate. He almost expects that somebody who has so much experience with the sport will frown upon such a modification and think of it on equivalent ground with training wheels on a bicycle, but he only looks impressed.

“Yes, I had a feeling it was something like this… So inventive.” 

“I didn’t make it that way. Reki did.”

“Oh? Well, that makes him just a _little_ bit more interesting, then, doesn’t it?”

Langa shrugs. He _should_ nod. Should cut in to say that Reki was never _un_ interesting. Should proudly explain what had been going through Reki’s head when he’d helped him with his board and how amazing it was that he’d been able to come up with such a simple but genius solution to Langa’s biggest pitfall in skateboarding.

But.

There’s something there, stilling his tongue. When he recognizes it as the fleeting but potent clutch of jealousy, he hurriedly motions for Adam to hand the board back. He does, but not without sending him a look that is a touch too probing.

Langa’s skin crawls. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts, and points down to the pavement, then to Adam’s clothing.

“You’re going to help me while dressed in all of that?”

Adam’s handwave is dismissive. 

“I did not bring a board to skate alongside you, so what you’re thinking is unnecessary. What would be the harm if I did, though? Is this any worse than what I might wear in a race? Or any different than you being in your school uniform now?”

No, Langa supposes that it’s not, or at least not aside from the fact that Adam’s clothes are likely much more expensive than his own. He can’t believe that Reki thinks that mask of his is cool. The face underneath it is much more…

Much more something that Langa refuses to think.

Adam keeps going on. “Besides… Everything I can think to give you a hand with now has to do with your posture more than anything.” 

He emphasizes his point by reaching out to touch Langa’s shoulders, just a few finger curls away from grabbing them. He’s barely touching them, but Langa is still hyper aware of the contact. The older’s hands slide to the junction where neck meets shoulder, and then back down, over the edges where shoulder meets upper arm, and there he gives a firm but painless push downwards. “Relax, little Langa.”

The command is wasted on him. He feels stiffer with the move than he had before it. Adam’s hands don’t drop from his shoulders so much as they slide down his arms, down, down, all the way until they’re around his wrists and Langa finally jerks backwards, out of his grip, only just barely managing to save his board from clattering against the ground. 

“Don’t–”

“Touch you? You’re right. I’m sorry. I forgot to ask again.”

That’s right. Adam _had_ asked, once upon a time. Consent hadn’t seemed to factor in during their race, though. 

He might as well be reading Langa’s mind.

“S has a different set of rules. No-holds-barred. When those green lights come up, everything else is greenlit, too, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it’s right to hurt people during a race.”

Adam laughs. Langa feels a fierce heat rise to his face. That feeling of being belittled. 

“Did I hurt you?”

No. He’s all in one piece. He may have even come out of their race feeling better than ever. Adam doesn’t need him to confirm that, though, he’s certain. He knows exactly what Langa is referring to and is purposely choosing to be obtuse about it. 

“If one doesn’t know how to take it, love can really hurt sometimes. It’s fortunate that you take it so well, hmm?” Langa stares, unamused, but his cheeks have yet to stop burning up. “And on that note, it’s not my fault that I haven’t been as compatible with others as I am with you.” 

“I don’t get what you’re saying.”

He does, but he’s determined to brush this conversation off.

“I think you do. Simply put… If your friend had any skill, then he wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

“Reki is skilled. He’s been teaching me this whole time.”

“What an enviable position. But now _I’m_ going to teach you. What does that mean for him?”

Langa purses his lips. He’s not like Reki. He doesn’t have that same hotheadedness that allows him to have a comeback for this moment. It’s no excuse for _being_ a pathetic excuse of a friend, but if Reki doesn’t even know that this conversation with Adam was within the realm of possibility once his friend had left him to return home, then maybe it’s not so terrible that Langa keeps his mouth shut. 

“You haven’t taught me anything yet,” Langa spits, trying to have even half of the social guts as Reki, “so teach me already.” He drops his board down, keeping it from rolling off with one foot. “Give me something to do.”

Adam shakes his head. The look on his face is stupidly fond, which Langa definitely ignores. 

“Now’s not the time for all of that spirit. I already told you, we still need to work on your posture first. Positioning, balance. Your basics have been ruined by that other boy…” He tuts. Langa frowns at him, brows furrowing with irritation. Reki had nothing to do with his basics. They both know that his time spent snowboarding is more to blame; Adam’s just being cruel on purpose now, he thinks. “You don’t want me to touch you, so these are things I can only _tell_ you how to improve.”

“You can touch me, I don’t care,” Langa asserts. He doesn’t think about the weight of the words until Adam’s lips have curled and his gaze has narrowed.

“Oh, how you tempt me.”

“Guh– I di–”

“I want to savor the fruits of your efforts. Your improvements. Seeing you do it all right before my eyes outside of a course would be a waste.” That all sounds like bullshit to Langa. Adam carries on. “It would be shameful to work up a sweat and have that be the way we greet your mother after her long day at work anyhow. Let’s go inside. I’ll tell you everything you need to work on before we can move forward.”

His mother. They probably have an hour or two before she comes home. It’s comforting and disturbing all at once that Adam hadn’t forgotten about her while Langa nearly had. On the one hand, it makes him wonder if he actually cares about her. On the other…

Isn’t he just trying to avoid her seeing him in a “shameful” position with her son? 

Langa sighs, nods, and picks his board back up. He’d prefer a hands-on lesson. Not the sort of hands-on Adam had implied. The movement, though. The rush of the wind. Feeling himself improve in real time rather than having to soak in information and try to apply it for the next chance he’s on his board. 

Tucking his disappointment into the back of his mind, he tips his head towards the door and walks to unlock it and let them both inside, setting his things down out of the way of the entry once the door is shut.

Adam is on him before he’s even got his shoes off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, I PROMISE there will be porn in the next chapter. I can't help that I love to over set things up, sorry!
> 
> And, ahhhh, Langa's real wife material... He deserves the build-up... 
> 
> I was so happy to see the support I received on the first chapter that I totally banished the idea of waiting a few days before writing and posting this one, ahaha. Thank you all!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long! I worked on it bit by bit all this time but it did not want to flow as easily as the first chapters. Forgive me.
> 
> And forgive me for typos and blatant mistakes, too, because as always this is unedited!!!
> 
> The more I write for this, the more I realize I'm having too much fun dragging it all out, ahah. I know how I want things to conclude but I keep thinking up little scenes and wondering about writing them while also going "ahhh, but then what if it completely fucks up what I thought the ending could be?!" 
> 
> Anyway. I hope you enjoy!

On him, as in, pressed right against Langa’s back, toes of his shoes nudging at Langa’s heels. It’s a position they’ve been in before, more or less, except this time they’re not on their boards and Adam does not snake an arm around his waist. He leans, leans, leans into Langa’s back and sends him careening, stability lost over stray shoes belonging to himself and his mother, and tripping over the edge of where the _genkan_ is recessed into the floor.

It feels like slow motion when Langa puts his hands out to catch himself before he can go splitting his chin open on the floor, and only then does Adam snatch him around the middle, yanking backwards, back into the same chest that had just bumped him forward. The force of it is so jarring that Langa stumbles into it despite his best efforts to regain his footing. He thinks briefly that all his flailing limbs might send the both of them toppling to their asses.

Adam is solid behind him, though, and the distance between their bodies is less now that their feet are slotted side-by-side rather than lined up heel-to-toe. So much less that Langa can feel the rounded buttons of Adam’s suit jacket digging into his back despite layers of fabric. 

The arm around his middle reaches up while the other takes its place, and he even feels the band of the man’s watch press into the side of his stomach with how closely his fingers and palm are splayed against it. Adam’s other fingers find his chin, hold it in position so that Langa can’t turn his head and has to rely on his peripheral vision when Adam’s face comes close to the side of his own, speaking right into his ear before Langa’s stitched his frayed nerves back together enough to consider chewing the guy out.

“See? We really need to work on your balance. And that’d be no way to catch yourself; you’ll sprain your wrists like that.”

“You _pushed_ me,” he says, and _he_ feels like the petulant one even though he’s not the one pushing others around like a schoolyard bully.

“Did I?”

Of course he— 

Did, didn’t he? If Langa is technical about it, then the man only crowded into his space, but—it’s the same. He steels his resolve. There’s a limit to how much he’s going to put up with in his own home.

“That’s… Semantics. You pushed me.”

“And your reaction was slow. Luckily, I don’t mind catching you when you fall.” There’s something in the way he says it, like there’s a catch _to_ his catching. An unspoken “ _for now._ ” An implication that there may come a point where he might not be so willing in the same way he hadn’t extended a hand to Reki or probably countless others.

Langa grits his teeth, batting Adam’s hold away. He should have done it sooner. Surprisingly devoid of any complaints or bemused commentary, Adam peels himself away from his back and slips his shoes off, stepping out of the entry before looking back to Langa, expectant, gesturing for him to do the same and follow along. Like it’s his home, all of a sudden, and _Langa_ is the guest. 

Langa holds his tongue as he complies. He might not have the strongest resolve after all. But what good does standing here do? As an afterthought, he hangs up the jacket of his school uniform even though it leaves him feeling exposed.

“My balance… I didn’t fall at S with you. What’s the problem?”

“No,” Adam says, sounding sentimental as he flips a light switch and walks through the living room, pausing at photographs here and there that he hadn’t had the chance to look at closely on his first visit. Langa’s never been embarrassed at the level of doting and pride his mother has always had for him, but he’s suddenly itching to snatch up old photos and stash them somewhere out of view. “You didn’t. You did have some sloppy landings, though. When I was watching the video back, I even noticed that your board–”

“Video? You have the video of… Us?”

A video that Adam had watched closely enough to pick Langa’s skateboarding style apart. Just how many times had he done so in order to so confidently nitpick and dole out advice? Once, expert that he was? Twice? Three times or more, _obsessive_ as he was?

When he watched it, did he..?

Unbothered by Langa’s interruption, Adam’s picked up an old family photo. Langa’s father is in it. He wishes he felt defensive about what Adam thinks he has any right to examine so closely, instead of extremely guilty over the weird thoughts in his head.

When Adam sets it down, he turns to smile at him. It’s abnormal how _normal_ he is in this setting, at least comparatively to the persona Langa has come to know. Langa doesn’t pay any attention to politics—he’s only just moved here, and the subject holds little interest to him to begin with—but he imagines _Ainosuke_ must be a very charismatic man. He’d look into it, but on the off chance that his mother becomes aware of his internet history, he’s stayed resolutely away from knowing the ins and outs of whatever life Ainosuke must lead. 

It’s difficult enough to know _ADAM_. 

“Of course. Recording such things is the only way to relive the moment until the next time.”

So their match was probably not the only one Adam had on record. If others were to be believed about how infrequently Adam deigned to show himself at S, though, it was likely the only one in recent times.

“I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve played it back. A more worthwhile watch than others...”

And it’s probably the one he’s watched the most.

“I want it,” Langa interrupts before he can mentally preen any longer. 

If Adam gets to study him, Langa thinks he deserves to have the same opportunity. From a video that isn’t just a handful—Christ, a _handful_ , he almost feels embarrassment crowd at his cheeks again—of seconds long. Something he can actually learn a thing or two from.

“Your word choice is always the most interesting... That’s good, though, good. It would help you to be able to see your triumphs and mistakes alike.”

He beckons Langa closer. A Langa who is starting to feel self-conscious about the way he speaks—not to mention, the way he _thinks_. Usually, that feeling is reserved for how his Japanese doesn’t flow as smoothly as those who have lived here all their lives. Not this. Still, he shuffles forward, focusing instead on how it’s almost _too_ normal now to see Adam pulling out a phone and using it so casually, knowing what eccentricities the man is capable of. 

When Langa is close enough to peek from his side at the phone screen, Adam asks for his number. Stupidly, Langa gives it to him without question, watching him input it. He pauses at the name to enter it under, looking to Langa with a Chesire grin before typing in ‘SNOW’ and leaving it at that. 

He sends one quick greeting to Langa’s phone, either because he doesn’t trust that the number he’s been given is correct, as a just-in-case measure for Langa to be able to contact him (not going to happen, Langa swears), or because he simply wants to relish in the chime of the phone from where it’s forgotten in Langa’s school bag by the door. Probably that one.

“I’ll send it later for you to review at your leisure. For now…” He pauses and shakes his head, putting a hand to the small of Langa’s back and murmuring something about getting comfortable as he guides the younger towards the couch.

It’s largely unwelcome contact, but Langa doesn’t brush it off. Doesn’t even protest it when they’re seated and Adam drapes the same arm over the back of the couch, leaning in closer than strictly necessary as he holds his phone within view. 

He smells cool and sharp, cut only by a shallow note of tobacco that Langa can’t bring himself to find unpleasant. Not that he’s paying a great deal of attention to the man’s scent. It’s just such a far cry from the overwhelming sensory input S had brought him, where spice had mingled with something static in the air, that he can’t help but to notice the difference now.

“Right here.”

Adam’s finger finds a place on the video progress bar displayed on screen with exacting precision. 

Yes, this is far from just the second or third time he’s watched this very moment, Langa knows that for certain now.

Langa expects it to be any number of the times that he’d found himself in Adam’s arms. Perhaps the man had felt exactly the ways he’d leaned his weight and gleaned something about incorrect posture. 

It’s not that, though. It’s the two of them coming down from carving through the length of a makeshift vert ramp, not too long before the police sirens had sounded. He remembers how fast they’d been going. How, if he hadn’t had a bright red target in front of him to chase after, he might have lost his nerve on the jump down. 

Adam’s replayed landing is smooth. His own looks pathetic in comparison now that he’s not right there in it, clearly straining as he manages to stop teetering and regain some composure.

Adam’s watching him.

Not the Langa on screen. _Him_. The Langa right beside him. 

“So? You see?”

“Anybody would–”

Not anybody. Adam hadn’t. He tries again. 

“Anybody doing that for the first time and going that fast would have that problem. I didn’t fall.”

“The next time, though, you might have. Though that could be an issue of stamina more than balance…”

He resents that, though he hasn’t got the conviction to say so. He’s got plenty of stamina. He’d kept up with Adam, hadn’t he? Had handled snowboarding well for how many years?

Besides. Reki had taught him that bailing out was one of the fun parts of skateboarding.

“Your standards are impossible,” he deadpans, turning his head to meet Adam’s gaze dead-on. It’s a simple but reckless move; he can’t help but to think about how close they are. Practically nose-to-nose. She’s not due for some time, but if his mother walked in now… 

She wouldn’t think a thing, because nothing is happening. Going to happen. The telltale beating in his chest is nothing and he’s thinking ridiculous things for no reason.

“Maybe. You’ll do your best to meet them anyway, though, won’t you?”

“I’ll exceed them.”

The curve of Adam’s lips is absolutely wicked.

Langa feels a twist in his gut. The same one he’s been getting since he started participating in S, a feeling that has ebbed in its absence, twice renewed now. 

“Should we do something about that stamina, then, little Langa?”

He almost turns away. Almost thinks to glance back at where his shoes and his board are and wonder aloud why they ever came inside at all if Adam was planning on teaching him after all. 

He doesn’t. He knows there are times when his head is full of more air than it is anything else, but this is an instance where he’s _pretty sure_ the neurons fire correctly. Adam’s asking about something startling, but not unfamiliar. He’s got the tone that a girlfriend or two back in Canada had taken with him before, before they’d grown irritated with his lack of interest, except this time he _is_ interested and the person offering is _far_ from somebody he’d spent a semester sitting behind in math class.

He shouldn’t say yes.

For a lot of reasons. 

Morals and promises and the fact that _his mother is dating this man_.

So why is it Langa himself closing the short gap between the two of them like it’s the most natural thing to do?

He’s not good at it. This. Kissing. Thinks he never has been, if those relationships back in Canada were any indication. Adam doesn’t seem to mind, doesn’t even seem caught off guard by the suddenness or the bruising force of it. The latter _may_ be an issue, because Langa feels the arm that had previously been a ghost behind shoulders over the back of the couch shift, and Adam’s hand combing upwards through his hair from the base of his neck until it gives a gentle tug at the locks, the sort of force that Langa unconsciously moves into and unwittingly eases up because of.

Eases up, not backs out. 

This, too, is something he wants to chase the thrill of. Excel at. Even if that means tasting the remnants of a cigarette on Adam’s lips or taking it in stride when he feels Adam’s phone drop between them, forgotten in favor of freeing up the hand to rest right above one of Langa’s knees. 

He doesn’t even know what to do with his own hands. 

That might be why it’s so shocking that, rather than groping at his thigh like he halfway expects, Adam’s hand takes one of his into its grasp as the man pulls away from the kiss. It’s strangely reassuring. 

Distantly, Langa thinks that this sweetness is probably something his mother likes about the guy.

Less distantly, the guilt tastes like so many ashes when he licks over his lips.

And even less distantly than that, he sees the look Adam is giving him and thinks he’d like to do it all again.

There’s something wrong with him. Adam strokes some of the hair out of his face. 

“Eve, so willingly eating of the forbidden fruit,” he says, low, a whisper. It comes off as a bit chastising. 

It’s an outlandish thing to say. 

It _should_ be a turn-off.

This is Adam, though. He’s heard weirder out of his mouth, and he barely knows him. 

Knows him well enough to kiss him, apparently. 

Knows him well enough to have already thought twice now about doing it again. 

Which, he also thinks, might ironically be the smartest thing to do in this situation, because responding to Adam’s cryptic words could be too indulgent of whatever strange, biblically-adjacent fantasy Langa is starting to get the feeling he has in his head for the two of them. The last thing he wants to do is offhandedly mention that he’s pretty sure Adam isn’t off the menu for Eve. 

If action speaks louder than words, he doesn’t need to anyhow. 

The second kiss is better. 

Adam, for all that he seems to like Langa’s enthusiasm, doesn’t let him do as he pleases this time, and that’s really for the best. He coaxes a rhythm out of Langa that he hadn’t thought himself capable of following. It’s all in the subtle tip of his head to nudge their lips to fit snug together, apart, together, until sweet and rhythmic turns to filthy and open-mouthed so naturally that Langa wonders how Adam’s tongue hadn’t found its way into his mouth sooner. 

He takes to rolling his tongue against Adam’s like they’re trading off still-warm, soft maple candy, and it keeps him distracted enough to not worry so much about what his or Adam’s hands are doing until the pressure’s changed against his lips and he realizes the change in the rhythm he’d been getting so into is due to Adam shifting around in the removal of his suit jacket.

He pulls back, then, and tries to convince himself that the smirk Adam sends him in return for his curiosity doesn’t make his heart pound against his ribcage. 

Realizing that he’s probably doing it so he doesn’t get it visibly wrinkled is mortifying and mollifying all at once. Right. It’s best if there’s no evidence of whatever it is they’re doing now for when his mother returns.

It’s awful that he also realizes some of the hesitance over where to put his hands is because he’d been afraid of what it might look like to her if he messed up Adam’s meticulously coiffed hair or put a crease in his perfectly pressed shirt collar.

“I don’t know what to do from here,” he suddenly blurts out, surprising himself. He doesn’t know why he feels lame for it, too. _He’s_ not the one seducing a teenager. But he is the one unsure of where to put his hands and how to stop feeling so guilty.

“Ah,” is all the acknowledging sound Adam makes for a moment. The nerves coil up tighter in Langa’s gut. There’s no reason he should want to or have to impress this creep with his lacking sexual prowess. And that’s where this is heading, isn’t it? 

“I figured,” Adam says, and that makes it even worse. He probably likes the inexperience better. 

He gets what Langa can only describe as a sympathetic look on his face. “Then… Let’s not worry about you lifting a finger this time around, hm?”

_This time around._

“Uh—okay,” he so intelligently responds. 

The way Adam removes his wrist watch—expensive looking like everything else he’s wearing, he internally notes—and starts rolling up his sleeves is as mesmerizing as it is somewhat clinical, the latter of which is a word he’d never think to use for the man. He’d been getting riled up before, but the silence is deafening and the actions are so mundane that Langa feels himself calming down, and then freaking out a little over the fact that Adam’s even going out of his way to do this much, and for what? What are they going to do on a cramped couch together? Should they be moving this to his bedroom, or would that only make his anxiety worse, heightening expectations?

“What are we… You…”

Adam shushes him, literally puts a finger to his lips and presses it against the swell of them.

“I only want you to relax and enjoy yourself,” he starts, pushing his fingertip against the seam of Langa’s lips, and then in between when the teen parts them slightly, only to stop at the tip of his tongue and pull it back, down, dragging a thin, quickly drying trail of saliva down Langa’s lower lip to his chin. “I intend to treat you sweetly. But this, too, you might like to consider as a lesson.”

His response is stiff, but only because he can’t get the wheels turning in his head enough to come up with anything else. It’s hard to do, when Adam’s hand withdraws from his face and draws a line down the upper half of Langa’s torso instead, quite possibly with the intent of heading towards an area that Langa’s not stupid enough to question him out of. “I… Understand.” 

At least, he thinks he does. This, whatever it is, is a secret between the two of them, and it makes sense that its heavy weight would come with rules. He’s just not so sure he’s equipped with what it takes to follow them.

“I knew you would.” 

He’s on the cusp of questioning whether or not this is still sexy after all when Adam kisses him again, giving his chest a gentle shove at an angle that lets Langa know the man wants him to lay back against the arm of the couch instead of sitting so stiffly against the back of it. Adam moves with him as he complies, never once taking his mouth off of Langa. They aren’t still kissing as a pair by the time Adam has him where he wants him, pinned to the couch with Adam caging him in, but there are still lips at his cheek, trailing over his jaw, mouthing at his throat. 

Adam’s teeth, Langa learns, are as sharp as they are straight and pearly white. It doesn’t hurt when they graze against the column of his neck, but it gets a noise out of him that he’s not sure he’s ever made before. Adam huffs amused breaths against his skin, pushing the loose fabric of Langa’s uniform button-up and undershirt collars aside to continue with the skin it reveals. Langa gets it, when Adam’s teeth nibble and his mouth sucks, that he’s hoping to leave marks. 

That’s something Langa’s always thought of as a kind of rite of passage for teenagers around his age that he might never complete, having a neck full of hickeys, and it gives him a quiet pleasure to pass the benchmark, but he’s also pretty certain they’re not supposed to be left behind by grown men. 

The way Adam is going about it, they’re marks that, this way, won’t even be seen, at least not unless Langa isn’t quick when changing into his gym uniform in the locker rooms at school.

That makes him shudder in a not wholly unpleasant way to think about. One of Adam’s knees lifting to wedge between his own and drive upwards between his legs makes him shudder, too, even when all it does is barely graze between his thighs, never reaching higher lest Adam have to rearrange himself entirely. Langa doesn’t particularly doubt his flexibility, either, though. 

Is it really okay just to lie here for this?

Adam’s fingers absently toy with the buttons of Langa’s shirt on their way south, but never pry any of them open. He’s more interested in the waistband of Langa’s pants, of the button there that is a grander prize, and Langa can’t exactly say he isn’t more interested in that as well. 

Adam gives a sigh, eyes wandering over every inch of Langa that is laid before him. The sight can’t be too impressive; he’s a fully dressed teenager on a not-very-flattering chartreuse colored couch. “I’m sure this isn’t how either of us imagined it.” 

As if Langa had been imagining anything. He _hasn’t_ been, or so he tells himself, and he definitely isn’t interested in any of Adam’s overly romantic imaginings. And if Langa _is_ imagining anything, it is that. That Adam’s imaginings are romantic. Way out of line. Difficult to comprehend like everything else about him. It would almost be easier if he only seemed to be interested in him for carnal reasons.

“I’d like to see and take my time to appreciate all of you, enjoy the lead up to this and more, but…” Adam trails off, readjusting himself to sit up long enough to deftly undo everything of Langa’s that keeps him away from his goal. Belt buckle, button, zipper. Langa is, disconcertingly, getting hard already and barely a damn thing has happened. It might be because of the way Adam looms over him, too, cutting a striking figure even in his vest and with his rolled-up sleeves. He’s _interesting_ to look at in the tacky — still expensive — clothing he wears for S. He’s unquestionably attractive in a way more socially acceptable manner like _this_. Never mind that what he’s doing is _less_ socially acceptable. “I’m afraid we haven’t _got_ that sort of time.”

Yeah. Langa knows. 

He still has a meal to put on the table for the two of them and his mother. Homework to do—not that he wants to think about that right now. A bit of self clean-up—not just because of Adam’s eventual ministrations, but because when he’s already regretting not having on more casual clothes for this, he can’t help but to think about how good it’s going to feel to have something else on, something less stiff. 

Something the shame won’t cling onto as tightly.

Langa shakes his head. At Adam, but at himself, too.

“That’s– we’ll make up for it some other time.”

_Some other time_. _This time around._ _The_ two _of them are a delusional pair_ , Langa thinks.

Adam smiles down at him and presses the heel of his palm into Langa’s crotch, beneath the fabric of his uniform but over that of his boxer briefs. He’d been somewhat anticipating it, but it still knocks away the loose grip Langa had had on his composure with troubling quickness.

He’s not some purehearted maiden, but for whatever reason his immediate reaction as Adam continues to palm against him is to clamp his hands over his mouth. Partially, it must be to keep himself from making noise, because he’s over-convinced himself of how secretive this whole thing needs to be. Aside from that, it may be the shame of inexperience that cows him into wanting to hide some small part of himself.

Adam’s hand draws away. Langa’s frustrated groan is muffled.

Hadn’t he given the man permission to touch him? Why did this have to be so stop-and-go?

He’s not desperate or anything.

“Langa,” Adam chides, reaching for his wrists and pulling his hands away. He doesn’t pin them anywhere, doesn’t set them in any particular place for Langa to hold onto, just rubs his thumbs over the teen’s wrists for a time before letting them go for Langa to figure out what to do with. “How are we meant to whet our appetites for another time if you won’t even let your mouth open?”

Langa gets the picture. Adam wants to hear him. See his face, too, probably. He instantly wants to hide it again, but in the interest of getting Adam to just _touch him already,_ he balls his hands up against the couch cushion beneath him instead. 

Adam looks on for a second longer, maybe waiting for him to have something to say, and then shifts further back, closer to the other arm of the couch, to put his hands on Langa’s hips, sliding them under where he’s pressed to the couch, and pull up. Message clear, Langa dutifully lifts his hips, lets Adam pry fingers under fabric and peel his pants and underwear down to the middle of his thighs, and pretends it isn’t nerve wracking to be this bare in front of another person.

In front of _this_ person, especially.

Admittedly it’s harder to worry about it when a hand curls around his dick and starts stroking it, though, bringing all the shame and irritation that had been simmering in his blood to a screeching halt. Not the blood itself, though; that all rushes downwards. 

“Finally,” he sighs out, in English, as he pushes up into that grip, not even realizing the word had come out of his mouth until Adam laughs.

“You’re right. I’m so worried about time that I’ve been wasting it.”

Adam’s English is smoother than Langa would have expected from somebody with a special move known as “Love Hug.” Langa doesn’t have it in him anymore to be embarrassed that he could have said something a lot more incriminating and been understood just fine. He’s going to need to watch his tongue more.

“Patience is a virtue, though,” Adam goes on to say, rubbing his thumb over the head of Langa’s cock. It’s somehow not disgusting _or_ annoying when he removes his hand again to lick off the gathering of pre-cum on his fingertips, but even if the sight of a well-dressed man licking his hand is appealing, Langa really, really wishes Adam would stop picking the worst times to stop touching him. Adam stares him down all the while. 

And maybe patience is a virtue, because when Langa doesn’t spend the ticking time groaning or glaring, Adam rewards him.

If the sight of a well-dressed man licking his fingers is good, the sight of a well-dressed man nearly slipping off a too-short couch just to get his mouth on Langa’s dick is…

Well, it’s _really_ good. 

Adam’s hands have found their way back again, too, one pressing down against his hip to keep him still while the other is holding Langa’s cock in place as he licks up the underside of it. Slow, warm stripes with a flattened tongue that start far down enough at the base that Langa can feel the man’s lower lip drag against his balls at the start of every lick upwards. Langa wants to combust when his hand starts moving again, too. The pace is agonizing, but there’s no questioning that this is already leagues better than what his own sweaty or lotion-slicked hand can do when he’s holed up in his bedroom alone. 

And Adam never stops _looking_ at him. The attention makes him anxious, but that anxiety manifests as a concentrated heat low down in his stomach, and Langa finds that he can’t look away either because of it.

He can when Adam puts his lips around the entire tip of his cock, though, if only to study the ceiling instead with the hopes that the blank white of it will calm him down enough not to come early. It doesn’t, not really, but he relishes in the reprieve from Adam’s dark, fixated stare.

“ _F-fuck_...” That’s English, too. Langa _feels_ more than hears Adam’s delight in making him swear.

Adam’s mouth is relentless in return; all of that licking and the sound it makes when he sucks and pulls back just to start over again, even the sounds _Adam_ makes himself, all pleased hums that echo after every gasp of Langa’s own, might as well be a neon sign begging Langa to look again. 

When he does, his hips stutter upwards of their own accord, and it is only Adam’s unyielding grip on his hip that reminds him he ought to try and stay still. This _is_ supposed to be about stamina, isn’t it?

He’s not so sure he’s got a lot of that left. 

In fact, he’s positive, and the idea that Adam hadn’t even had to swallow him down _all_ the way to get him to this point is near-to humiliating. How many minutes has it been, if any? It might just be seconds.

He can’t even get the warning out—isn’t sure if he even wants to, quite frankly, because he doesn’t know if Adam deserves that sort of politeness regardless of the service he’s doing for him—before he’s cumming with a weak cry, and this time Adam lets his hips shove upwards.

Adam lets a lot of things happen in that instant, actually.

Langa cries out again at the added pressure of Adam remaining in place and swallowing down everything he has to give, and finds himself whimpering when the man’s tongue laves up any remainder, giving far too much prolonged attention to his sensitive cockhead. 

It’s cold there when Adam pulls his mouth off of him, finally, and cages him in again, hovering over Langa’s frame. 

“Sorry,” is all Langa can muster up, because the staring is too prolonged for him to let the silence continue. Mostly silent, at least. He can hear himself panting.

So he’s sorry. For his earliness. For having Adam clean up the mess of that earliness. 

“Don’t be. If the fruit is sweet, of course I’m going to eat it,” he purrs back.

“That’s…” Not right. Pretty disgusting. He’s a teenage boy who spent a whole day at school, he’s certain there was nothing sweet about anything that just happened. 

He doesn’t see the use in arguing against Adam’s warped sense of reality. 

Langa clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably, and then clears his throat again when his leg moves up against Adam’s own hardness. “Uhm...”

Should he..? 

He’s still trying to calm his heartbeat and figure out how to word it when Adam’s phone rings from where it had evidently fallen between the couch cushions, given how Adam sits back and gives one of Langa’s legs a nudge to fish it out. 

“Your timing’s no good,” Adam says instead of a hello, without even looking at the screen to check who it is.

His tone is still a little sultry, oddly praising despite the negative words, and Langa feels a remarkably unnecessary pang of jealousy at the person on the other end of the call.

It goes away when Adam clicks the disconnect button before any other words are exchanged. 

He grabs his suit jacket from over the back of the couch and pockets the phone after he’s put it on, looking Langa over all the while. Doesn’t he ever tire of it?

“You are... Exquisite. It kills me not to be able to stay.”

Langa’s sitting up in an instant, awkwardly wriggling his pants back up on his hips. The compliment does nothing to slow him. “What? You’re leaving? What about–”

“I was not invited over tonight.” 

Those words drop like a vase to the floor. Adam leans in to steal a kiss against his slack mouth that Langa is too dumbfounded, or too _something_ , to return.

“Your mother will be home soon. You’ll have to get yourself in order and start cooking now if you want something prepared for her in time,” the man idly comments as he stands, as if talking about the weather. 

Langa stands, too, quick enough to nearly lose his footing while he’s still in a daze from having the stability sucked right out of his body and brain. Adam sees him falter and laughs, gently mocking.

“ _Balance_ , see? Work on that. Have your friend look your board over, too.”

“You’re really…”

“Leaving. Yes,” says Adam, moving to go and put his shoes back on at the door. Whatever hardness had been tenting his pants is already disappearing. Langa doesn’t know whether to feel insulted or impressed. He’s feeling too many other things at the moment. “But we’ll see each other again very soon.”

Langa reels, snatching Adam’s forgotten watch up off of the coffee table before approaching the other. He doesn’t even know what to say. He should have asked all of those better questions about intentions with his mother at the start instead of questioning how Adam would help him and winding up like this. He should not have gotten caught up so easily in this man’s orbit. He should— 

Adam’s gaze falls to the watch in Langa’s hands. His chin jerks up a little as if to gesture to it. 

“You keep that. It’s a gift. Count the seconds until we meet again.”

Langa feels his lip curl in distaste, but Adam’s already turning and leaving through the door, and he’s not about to chase after him. Not like this, belt and zipper undone and feeling the way he feels. The other had been right; he needs to get himself presentable and start cooking. He can figure out what to do about the mess he’s in later.

Before he changes, the watch is buried deep down among the contents of the drawer of his nightstand. He definitely does not thrill over its inscription before putting it there. 

_My Eve._

* * *

Adam had been right. Of course he had been.

There’s something a bit off about his board, something that Reki is all too happy to point out must mess with his balance after Langa asks him to take a look at it as they’re hanging out over the weekend.

The word “balance” somehow manages to trigger a response that might as well be Pavlovian for how it sends heat racing up Langa’s neck, all the way to the tips of his ears and the apples of his cheeks. 

Miya, who is “only here because he’s got nothing else to do”, is gearing up to show Langa a video of an old practice of his while Reki hops off to the edge of their neighborhood skatepark’s perimeter to fish tools out of his bag and fix the board issue, when he notices the redness and questions it.

“I’m a little sensitive to the heat,” he answers. It’s not an outright lie. 

“Oh. Right. Canadians... Well, it’s only going to get hotter here.”

Langa makes some noncommittal noise and gestures for Miya to press play on the video.

Miya’s quick in it. Pulls off a stunt that Langa recognizes from videos of skateboarders twice his age. It’s impressive. It makes him think a little. He glances over at Reki, sitting on the ground with his board and dutifully adjusting the truck of it to support Langa’s weight more evenly, or whatever his explanation had been, and then back to Miya.

“Hey… Adam coached you, right?”

The stare he gets at that is somehow quizzical and scornful all at the same time. “Yeah. Sort of.”

“What was that like? It didn’t make you two close, so..? He must have been overwhelming like he was during S..?”

Miya’s laugh is incredulous. 

“Close? Yeah, not even a little bit. But all he did was see me from the sidelines once and give me unsolicited advice. We exchanged contact info and he’d give me more from time to time. It was always spot-on...” The younger boy shrugs. “He’s a busy guy… You wouldn’t even believe me if I told you what I think he does for a living, not that I’ve paid any real attention to the exacts. A guy like that isn’t going to waste time with coaching some kid face-to-face.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Wh–”

Reki’s footfalls are loud against the concrete as he runs across to them. His arm has gotten better by now, and he smiles wide when he holds Langa’s board out to him with both hands, presenting it with a grand bow like it’s an object made of more precious materials than laminated wood and plastic and metal. Its value is a thousand times more than that, so the ostentatious presentation isn’t completely unwarranted. The smile is still on his face when he’s straightened up after Langa has taken the board.

“Should be good to go. Let’s give it a try and see if it feels better now, yeah?”

* * *

He gets a text in the evening, just before he’s managed to climb into bed. The timing is impeccable like that, and the sound of his phone buzzing with the notification isn’t startling until he sees the name on the screen. 

His bedroom door is locked shut and it’s likely that his mother is asleep, but he snatches the device up quickly as if afraid she’ll walk in and question why her boyfriend is texting her son. 

That’s stupid, though. It’s not “Ainosuke” that lights up the screen. It’s _ADAM_ that he’d saved it as, albeit reluctantly, from that initial text days ago. He should have deleted and blocked the number.

_Forgive the delay in getting this to you._

Attached in the next message is the video file from their beef at S. 

One more message comes in.

_Sweet dreams._

Langa doesn’t reply, but he does eye the drawer of his nightstand. 

When he finally does get into bed, he plays the video with the weight of the watch heavy on his wrist as he sinks in against his pillows. 

His hand wanders as much as his mind does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason I struggled with this chapter was... Hmmmm... I really wanted this whole scene to be stifling and awkward rather than flat out sexy... To have that feeling where Langa is both being dragged into something (it almost has like a... poorly communicated agreement for some kind of dom/sub situation going on, but not quite...) and kind of dragging his own damn self into it. And it being a situation where, there's nothing Really attractive about it, but Langa's a teenager and they make bad choices even when they're adamant about their rightness. I'd like it if people questioned if this outcome was really what Ainosuke was looking for, or if it just kind of... Happened as a result of cues Langa himself was putting out...
> 
> But I'm sure it comes off more like he was looking for it, ahahaha
> 
> Anyway! Thank you all for the support! Each new comment has been extremely motivating despite how long this took me to get out!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so short and so delayed, I'm very sorry! I'll be honest, it's not among the most interesting things I've ever written, either. 
> 
> I screwed myself a little bit by being the sort of person who likes their fics to feel as canon-compliant as possible while also being very much, uh, not canon, lmao. The tournament kind of threw a wrench right at my skull, lmfao, and I'd been debating on whether I wanted to diverge now or stick to it.
> 
> I'm doing a little bit of both! Just kind of... Elongating the timeline of canon and also saying "okay, fuck it, I have to do whatever I want, too!"

The return of S is a joyous one.

For a lot of reasons.

First, it’s exciting to know he can get back on his board somewhere that isn’t the local skatepark with it’s too-short quarter pipes or around the neighborhood. It’s not that the neighborhood is lacking in interesting routes—there are plenty of hairpin turns, rails, and smooth roads to speed down. It’s that there are _rules_ within it and people who will enforce them, making it so those twists and turns aren’t nearly as gratifying.

Second, it’s good to see everyone gathered in one place. He doesn’t love the attention he gets; it’s distracting. The atmosphere is good, though. Here, all of the people understand the feeling of finally turning loose all of the constraints of _rules_. It’s comforting. The mood is high. Everyone’s here loving the thing they love. 

Third, it helps to get his mind off of things like school, his mother's love life— 

He could go on. 

Adam is not his own category on the list of reasons why.

He shouldn’t be, at least, but he is, and especially more so with the announcement of a tournament.

S is fun. S is fun all on its own. Langa wants to be able to have that fun on its own. He _does_ have that fun.

S is about competition, though, at its core, and—he likes that, too. Likes pushing himself.

He’s not sure what the goal is beyond getting his heart racing, honestly. He doesn’t need to win anything, doesn’t care about notoriety or anything else—and there’s only so much fame to gain from underground skateboarding anyway. He likes skating _with_ others just fine, but there’s something about skating _against_ somebody, somebody who really knows what they’re doing, that feels different.

Maybe it’s not about a goal. Anybody in front of him is simply a moving goalpost. If he surpasses beyond where that post can move, he wants to chase down the next one up ahead. Right now, Adam _is_ that moving goalpost, and so…

And so, Reki isn’t happy about it.

His vitriol over the very idea of skating against Adam almost makes Langa think Reki _knows_. After all, Langa can’t see danger when he thinks of S, of tournaments, but he can kind of, sort of see it when he thinks about just Adam, about Ainosuke. He'd never considered the possibility that the damages he could suffer might be physical, or that already-inflicted physical damages would be messing with Reki's own psyche so bad.

In any case, S is a little less fun without Reki tagging along. He decides to wait for qualifiers to go back again, and Reki is avoiding him after school, so it leaves him with plenty of time to see things like the thing he’s seeing right now.

That is, his mother, coming in and out of her room in slightly different variations of what Langa is pretty sure is all the same outfit.

Little black dress. Slightly blacker black dress? Little black dress with a neckline that is scooped so low she doesn’t even come all the way out of her room to show him, throwing her hands up and saying that she doesn’t even know why she put this one on before disappearing behind the closed door again.

“You look nice in everything,” he says, “but I don’t really like you in black. It just reminds me of…”

He trails off. Even through the door he can practically _hear_ the sadness creep into her expression. He sort of regrets speaking his mind. She gives a noise of agreement and comes out in something a deep blue instead. 

A deep blue that... Also reminds him of something. 

“How about this?”

“It’s nice...” She _does_ look nice. It also kind of just looks the same as everything else she’d shown him, only this time the color is different. Girls at school have called him fashionable, but he’s inclined to disagree. He’s pretty sure there’s a difference between being tall and being trendy. What they know about his style when they only see him in his school uniform is lost on him, too.

“I’m out of options. I think it’ll do, though. Oh, I wonder if I shouldn’t have turned down his insisting to buy me something… I just got the feeling he’d go overboard on the price tag. It would have made me feel guilty.”

Langa wonders what costs more. A nice dress, or an engraved watch. 

He leans against the hallway wall, narrowly avoiding bumping down a picture frame. “Ahh… What is this for, again?”

“Dinner. _Fancy_ dinner,” she answers, drawing out the word ‘fancy’ and laughing. “I think we’ll be joined by some others in his field.”

Others in his field. Not skateboarders, that much is for certain, or else Langa is going to have to seriously examine faces the next time he's at S.

“Politicians?”

“Or some such. People he works closely with, at least. He won’t say it, but I think he seems a little stressed about it…”

“About…?” 

His heart pounds in his ears. He knows she’s not about to bring up his dirty secrets, but something in his head nags at him. Everyone must be on the verge of knowing, and this grown man, this apparently up-and-coming-into-prominence political figure, can only be stressed about keeping his relations with a teenager secret, nothing else. The paranoia is stressful and exciting both, and that bothers Langa the most.

“Work? People he works with? The news is a little nerve racking, I’ll admit…”

News? Maybe he really shouldn’t be worrying about bogging his search history down, if he's missing out on some integral part of both his mother and Ainosuke's life. Maybe he also shouldn’t have had his head in the clouds the other day when his mother was talking about something similar to now… 

But there’d been Reki, giving him the cold shoulder, and any mention of Adam brought that to the forefront of his mind, along with a dozen other Adam-related things that had only the worst parts to do with his mother's involvement with the man.

“Ah,” he hums out anyway, like he understands.

All Langa really understands, though, is that Adam is dragging his mother into his career, one way or another, and that bothers him. How he can be so casually continuing, _deepening_ , their relationship, when just the other night Langa had received a text from him about being so pleased to see his tournament entry show up in his notifications, is beyond him.

He’d responded, though. Had said he was looking forward to it. Even despite his mother. Even despite Reki’s feelings. 

They’d kept texting, too. Langa had been eating up Adam’s advice like a bear preparing for hibernation. It was important that the topic always stayed on skateboarding and never drifted.

His mother gets a wrinkle between her brow. Guiltily pursed lips and a glance down the hall, to the side that Langa knows lands somewhere in the general vicinity of where his father’s picture sits at their dining table. 

“Is something bothering you, Langa?”

He shifts, pushes his weight off the wall. 

“No. Maybe. Don’t you think it’s a lot?”

“What? What’s a lot?”

“Dinner with… Politicians. All that… It sounds like it could have a lot of publicity.”

It has to be stressful. It stresses him out a little, and he’s not even— 

He’d think he’s only tertiary in this arrangement, the son who only wants his mother’s stress-free happiness, except it’s not _really_ like that, is it? He’s every bit a main player, in his own way. 

His mother wrings her hands. “Yes, well…” 

She’s worse at hiding her nerves than he is at reading people.

“You don’t… Have to stay with him. If it’s stressful.”

“I want to support him,” she eventually manages. “I don’t want to believe he... Does bad things. It's nothing you need to worry about, Langa, you have other things to focus on. I think this dinner will be fine, and everything after, too. This spotlight on him is only temporary.” 

Bad things. If only she knew. It seems they’re _both_ in the dark about something the man is up to. And, unfortunately for Langa, Adam is a big part of the other things he has to focus on, regardless of what she says.

“If you say so.”

The doorbell rings. 

“Oh! I’m not even ready!” Hurriedly, she disappears back into her bedroom. He fails to see what else she could possibly change or prepare. “Langa, let him in!”

The last time he’d let Adam in…

He shakes his head. It’s not going to be that way this time. By keeping their text conversations to skateboarding, about S, he's... Set boundaries. He thinks. He brushes away his hesitation and the urge to follow in his mom’s footsteps by disappearing into his own room to change into something that isn’t casual loungewear. It shouldn’t matter what Adam sees him in. It _doesn’t_ matter.

He finds himself at least self-consciously wrapping his hand around his wrist when he opens the door for Adam and notices the man’s gaze drift from his face down to where his arm had dropped back down from the door handle. Like its bareness is nudity in need of covering. He lets go quickly, embarrassed at his own action.

“Of course I wouldn’t be wearing it now,” Langa grumbles before Adam can so much as greet him, stepping back, and then back again when Adam steps through the door after he's given the space.

“Oh, but you _have_ worn it?”

Adam’s in a darker suit than what Langa thought might be usual. His tie is blue, but not a shade that will properly match his mother’s dress. He looks good anyway. He doesn’t come with flowers this time. 

Why do those details have to feel like little victories? 

“I didn’t say that.”

“Because you didn’t need to. I’m—”

“My mom’s still getting ready,” Langa interrupts, because it’s wrong for Adam not to have asked already, and it’s wrong for he himself to be gloating over the lack of gifts in Adam’s hands for her. Bringing her up isn’t atonement so much as it’s guilt, though, he realizes.

Adam is unfazed.

“Then, should we sit?”

Which, naturally, means that he gets to say things that faze Langa. There’s no way he’s sitting down on that couch with Adam again, and he’s not so dense as to not see the sliver of a grin on the other’s face as he asks the question.

“No. I don’t think she’ll be long.” He hopes not, at least. “No use in taking your shoes off.”

“Hmm.”

So Adam continues standing in the entry. At this angle, with him standing there and Langa a step up in the house, they’re nearly the same height. It should be more comforting than being looked down on, but he’s left disconcerted by how level their gazes are. 

“The tournament is soon,” Adam eventually reminds him as the silence stretches on for too long.

“Yeah.”

This is _stifling_. It’s, in part, Langa’s fault, but the larger fault has got to be Adam’s, no matter how he may attempt to get a conversation going.

Texts were one thing. Seeing him at S was another. This, though, having him back in the house, making thinly veiled insinuations about what they last got up to here, Langa’s having a tough time dealing with. Maybe it’s because he’s feeling on edge lately. From this, from Reki. 

He thinks he could really ask those pressing questions this time. About why the hell Adam is even here and about to take his mother out to an extravagant dinner with others that will more or less cement that she’s taken a role in the life of Ainosuke Shindo. 

But his mother is only a few rooms away, something that’s emphasized by the muffled noise of her calling out that she’ll only be a minute more. It doesn’t feel appropriate, no matter how the questions buzz right behind his teeth.

Adam smiles serenely at him in spite of the atmosphere. 

Then, he puts a knuckle under Langa’s chin, lifting it up, and leans in.

“My- she’s _right there_ ,” Langa protests, so wary of his volume that it comes out in a mumble. So wary of the entire situation that he’s inadvertently frozen himself into place. The only part of him that seems to want to move is his heart, which beats a frantic rhythm. 

“I’m only looking,” Adam comes back with, dropping his hand. 

“Well. Don’t.”

“If I closed my eyes at this distance, what would _you_ do?”

“Nothing,” Langa says, vehement but still quiet, and watches Adam’s eyelids droop until they’re shut. He thinks he probably should have answered something along the lines of punching or slapping. 

But he’d be wrong on every account, even the one spoken aloud. He foolishly draws forward and brushes his lips against Adam’s, reveling in the adrenaline spike.

That should be the end of that, but Adam grabs his wrist before he can move back, right around where he’d covered the bare skin just moments ago, and the kiss drags on until the click of a door opening has Langa jolting back a step, smacking Adam’s hand away.

Adam straightens like nothing had happened as Langa’s mother turns the corner, wide but contrite smile on her face as she fiddles with an earring, little apologies cut off by the shock of seeing them still at the door. Langa hopes that a more potent contriteness doesn’t show up in his own expression.

“Langa! You didn’t invite him in properly?”

“Oh, no, I offered to wait here so as not to intrude. He was perfectly hospitable.”

Langa doesn’t think kissing your mother’s date is under the definition of “hospitable.”

"You could never intrude! I'm so sorry about..."

The idle chatter is a drone in Langa's ears. Somewhere in it, there's a reminder to Langa about eating leftovers before they go bad. Something about his mother not knowing exactly when she’ll be home. Something about how, oh, we still haven't taken each other up on having dinner here, how silly and forgetful of us.

He nods along dumbly, willing the pleasantries to end. When they do, he sees the two of them out the door and catches their snippets of continued conversation as it’s shutting. 

“Those earrings are lovely. I have something for you in the car that will match them well. I won't let you refuse it, either...”

He wonders what costs more. 

* * *

“It hurts to see a frown on your face, SNOW. You should be celebrating.”

He doesn’t want to have this heart-to-heart with _ADAM_ , of all people, and especially not here in the middle of the qualifiers for the tournament at S. He doesn’t say a word. 

The man withdraws his arm from around him, mirroring his frown.

“This is about your friend?”

“Yeah.”

So much for not having a heart-to-heart. His frown deepens just at the fact that he's said anything at all. It's not anybody else's business, even if he's been desperate for some advice. He'd rather ask his mother than this guy. He probably _will_ ask his mother, even if she's the last person he deserves to get any advice from.

“It won’t stop bothering you even if you frown about it all evening. If your friend isn’t going to take advantage of time he could be spending with you, then won’t you spend your time with me? In preparation for the main tournament, I’d like to offer some personal tutelage. It’ll get your mind off of him. And I have some things I’d like to forget about for a while, too.” 

He…

Shouldn’t.

He’s pretty sure it won’t even get his mind off of Reki. Certain of it, actually, considering that the only thing Langa can identify as the root of their problems is standing right beside him.

But.

It does have him pushing the whole situation to the _back_ of his mind, even if only temporarily, this offer.

“...Now?” Langa asks. He doesn’t miss the way the man beams at that.

“No, but I like your eagerness. There are still races going on, little Langa," he points out with a grin. "It would be disheartening for these tournament-hopefuls to lose their master of ceremonies so early into the night. Tomorrow, hm? I'll have somebody pick you up. Keep an eye on your phone for details."

He hesitates. The idea of being picked up is a little much. A hundred sayings about not riding in cars with strangers and not meeting with people in unknown areas march through his head. 

His head has been clouded lately, though. He looks around at the crowd, and up at the big screen where another round of skateboarders are about to get onto the course. Things are only going to get more serious around here during the tournament, he thinks, so he speaks up.

"... Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should be more interesting! Probably?!?! Although, I'm not sure how long it will be, either, based on the scenes I'm thinking of... I'm hoping to get it out within the next couple of days, in any case, hopefully before the next episode comes and hits me with ANOTHER wrench and makes me want to chicken out of my plans, ahahaha. I've got to just drop canon! I have to! Especially because I've fully convinced myself the natural ending to canon must be that Adam gets arrested, LMAO...
> 
> Anyway! Thank you all for your comments once again! I'm sorry that I don't reply to them individually! But I promise I read them over and over again like an addict and tell myself I've got to hurry up and make an offering to the people. Sorry that this one is so meager, wahhh


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this any more interesting than the last?! I don't know! I had fun writing it but when I skimmed over it upon finishing I was like... Hmmm... Dunno about this one, doesn't it feel really awkward... lmao. Too many he/his pronouns, too, oooouuugh. Absolutely killer to my sentence structure.
> 
> Anyway, unedited as usual, blahblah, hope you enjoy!

The pick-up time Adam sends him is exacting in its scheduling. There’s not much room between when the final school bell rings to when he should be out of his uniform and waiting like a dog at the door. Those aren’t Adam’s words, but the message had had little more than a time, place, and a statement for expectation of Langa’s readiness, so that’s how it comes across to him. He figures that Adam must be saving his usual flair for dramatics for when he actually arrives, or else there might be more to the message than an emphasis on punctuality. 

In this regard alone, it’s a blessing that Reki isn’t up for talking or skating with him. He still offers a quick farewell to the other boy and the classmates that chirp their own goodbyes at him before he ducks out of the classroom, already tossing the fact that Reki had only grunted in return out of his mind. That’s what this whole meeting is going to be about, anyway, putting Reki out of his mind for a while and enjoying the style of skating that gets the both of their hearts racing for totally different reasons. He’s going to make the effort to make things right with Reki, just—not right now. It’s too much a problem he doesn’t know how to solve yet. 

He’s so hurried and jittery both from skating at a somewhat reckless speed and over his approaching meeting with Adam that it takes him several tries just to get his key in the door. He almost starts to wonder if this kind of thing is the reason Adam got him a watch. Even though it’s not on his wrist, Langa is desperate to have something to check to make sure he’s ready in time. 

It’s the thought of that watch that gets him thinking that he needs to _not_ think too hard about what he picks to wear. For the sake of saving on time, sure, but also because there’s simply no reason to agonize over something he’s only going to skate in. Impressing Adam is...

He doesn’t need to do that. It’s out of the question to even dwell on the idea of it. It’s irritating that this isn’t even the first time he’s been torn on being thoughtful about his clothing choices where Adam is involved. He’s never worried about this kind of thing before in his whole life, he’s pretty certain.

Jeans. Loose-fitting shirt. These things are fine. 

… And a watch is simple enough to not stand out too blatantly with such a common outfit unless one is close enough to identify the brand or notice the elaborate detailing on its face. 

It’s not like he’s got the time to stash it away again once it’s on his wrist. Especially not with his phone buzzing in his pocket with a message. Unknown number.

_I’m here._

The characters on the screen read a bit ominously to Langa, and even more so when he notices the message had been sent at _precisely_ the time Adam had set, but he figures that’s his nerves thinking for him. It’s only to be expected that Adam and anybody who worked closely with him would place value on promptness, what with his strict career choice. 

Still, it’s a bit unsettling to think that maybe the driver had been waiting outside of his home just to hit send at a specific moment.

He sends his mother a message that he might not be home by the time she gets in and grabs his board from beside the door before heading out.

There’s a man waiting for him by that now-familiar car he knows as Adam’s. 

Langa isn’t sure what the etiquette here is as the man gives him only the most curt and professional of greetings, only lacking in an introduction, before looking towards the skateboard and the back of the car, another no-doubt-professionally-worded question on the tip of his tongue.

“Oh, uh- I’ll hold onto it,” Langa says, clutching the board tight to his chest. 

The watch, he thinks, catches the man’s eye, but nothing is said about it.

Langa awkwardly slides into the car when the door is opened for him, buckling in while the man makes himself comfortable in the driver’s seat. He expects the car to smell like Adam when he takes a nervous breath inward and focuses on it. Like tobacco, at the very least. 

It doesn't, though. It smells new. Clean. Plain. It somehow matches the man that had opened the door for him more than anything else and he knows nothing about him except that he's got to be the one that's picked Adam up from S, the one that has sat in this very car while Adam was in Langa’s house, su—

It’s not the time or place to think about that. 

There’s something else that’s familiar about the man, anyway. Langa just can’t place it.

He gets the feeling that they’re both kindred spirits in not needing to fill silences, but it feels rude not to say anything, especially when the man’s gaze finds his own in the rearview mirror. On accident, Langa would like to imagine; they’d merely been drawn to looking at each other in the instant the driver had been checking to make sure the coast was clear to drive, but the stare lingers just a little too long.

He anxiously taps his fingers against the deck of his board. His fingertips are too soft and the layers of wood too thick to make any noise in the action, which he’s grateful for, because the sound in this quiet car would probably spook him at this rate even if he was the one making it.

After spending an entire school day with a best friend hardly bothering to look his way, though, he might just be lonesome enough to pipe up for some conversation right now. Sitting meters away from Reki on the rooftop as they’d quietly eaten their lunches had been rough.

“Uhm. Thank you for… Picking me up. You’re… Very prompt. Right on time.”

It is a stiff and limping compliment. Their eyes catch in the mirror again.

“Yes. Well. I was the one to make the arrangements, so it only makes sense to be on time…”

“Oh.”

He’s not even sure what that means. He’d already supposed that this man was more than just a driver. To think that he knows Adam’s schedule well enough to be penning in exact times for him to meet with a teenager about skateboarding is kind of…

“Did… Was it you who sent me that text, then?”

“Yes.”

Sort of expecting the answer doesn’t make it sink any slower on its way into the pit of his stomach. 

He has nothing to be ashamed of. The texts he’s been exchanging with Adam are innocuous. Nothing more than skateboarding advice. A video or two— _still_ revolving around skateboarding. It’s all been largely impersonal, even, with Langa having all of the standoffishness of somebody waiting for an answer on a forum. Or at least, that’s what he’d hoped to come across like.

It still feels like a gross violation of his privacy. If Adam is comfortable enough letting this man schedule his life, text via his phone, pick Langa up as easily as he’d picked up that ashtray to collect Adam’s cigarette butt, wait around for and call Adam up once he’s finished—

Just how much does he know?

How much is inferred, how much has been talked about?

All of Langa’s best efforts to keep this hidden, all of his internal sighs of relief when his mother noticed nothing wrong, or when Reki and Miya hadn’t pressed about certain topics, and all along there’s been this man, ever at Adam’s side, likely all-too-aware of the goings-on between the pair of them.

His board’s wheels rattle as much as his nerves do as he reaches under it to wipe his sweaty palms off on his jeans. The man’s brow quirks in the mirror, but he’s otherwise impassive, and it is noiseless and maddening. 

In a dark little corner of Langa’s mind, he recognizes that this is also shining a light on a part of him that _isn’t_ nervous about somebody knowing he’s a terrible son, a bad friend, a weird, disgusting teenager. It’s a small part, but it’s there.

It can’t be that bad. If somebody knows and hasn’t bothered to step in. It can’t be that bad.

He still thinks he’d like to keep quiet for the rest of the car ride. 

Of course, things are never that easy.

“How old are you?”

The way the driver asks the question is monotonous. Being that Langa knows that the man must know the nature of the relationship—

No, not a relationship. That can be too heavy a word with too much meaning.

Relations, period.

Being that he knows that the man _must_ know the nature of the relations between his boss and the individual in the backseat of the car he drives, Langa gets the feeling that he already knows the answer to this question as well. He can’t even fathom why it’s being asked; it’s pointless.

“Eighteen,” he lies through his teeth. Not like it matters. Eighteen means nothing here in Japan. Eighteen is still “teen”. Eighteen is still “high school student.” He’s not sure what compelled him to say it at all.

“Hm.”

Hm.

_Hm?_

That’s it. That’s the end of the interaction? As abrupt as the talks with NPCs in games Miya had had him choose dialogue options for just to laugh at Langa consistently making the characters confused or upset?

He feels his forehead crease. He’s not going to drag this whole talking thing out, no matter how impolite it makes him feel to sit and be chauffeured around with nothing to offer. Something feels hostile here. Or, at least, it’s the same strange feeling he’d gotten right before Reki had blown up at him about his decision to skate with Adam.

Steadfastly, Langa looks out the window, avoiding that gaze in the mirror, and watches the scenery go by, content now to let the vehicle and its passengers steep in silence.

* * *

They pass buildings that look like they belong in a country that’s not so tight on space. Adam’s driver, assistant, secretary, Langa doesn’t know, seems to be checking every mirror like they might be getting followed. 

That’s more than a little daunting. It’s one thing to think about the people close to him knowing. It’s another when strangers and the general public could know.

Adam’s a politician. Adam’s a politician already in warm, if not hot, water, far as Langa has looked into or heard from his mother.

If the place they’re going to is in any way personal to him, then, yeah, Langa can surmise it would be pretty damaging to have somebody see a teenager waltz right in to meet him. Whether or not it helps that his mother might be known to others and so it might not be so strange is not something Langa wants to figure out.

He’s dwelling too much. He focuses instead on the buildings. Houses, he thinks. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that a man who does things like outfitting Crazy Rock with lights and monitors and jumping out of helicopters in costume might also live in a home like one of these. Like he should be living in the hollow underside of a skate ramp in order to avoid property taxes and bills and use his accumulated wealth for skateboarding and skateboarding alone. And buying teenagers roses and watches.

Slowly but surely, they make enough turns to seemingly leave buildings behind entirely. The driver stops the car down a wooded path. 

That thought about cars and strangers comes sneaking up on him. For just a moment, Langa thinks that this is a pitiful way to die. The driver comes around to open his door for him, though, and he puts it out of his mind. 

Still feeling slighted from their brief, in-car conversation, Langa’s quiet as he follows after the man. He’s not sure how much skateboarding Adam intends for them to do around here. The ground is uneven—and not in the way the course for S is, with its old, well-worn asphalt. This place would be impossible to get wheels turning on.

Eventually, though, they come upon an area that’s paved properly, though weeds have burst up from the cement of what appears to be a driveway, flattened against the concrete in some patches and growing up the walls surrounding an open gate. The drive stretches on further than that, heading somewhere much more presentable, but the man doesn’t lead him up that way. They cut through manicured grass and eventually come to an angle on a path where Langa can see beyond hedges and walls to the structure beyond. 

The house is _massive_. If that’s where Adam has spent much of his life, then it’s no wonder he is the way he is. It reeks of excess. He can only imagine what the inside is like—

And imagining is, apparently, all he can do, considering that the route they’re walking is parallel to the place. There’s another wall up ahead, though, and the lawn is otherwise so tranquil that it’s unreasonable to think a building, no matter how large, could hold his attention over the sound he hears from behind it.

Wheels spinning fast against a smooth surface. The tell tale clatter of them as the weight and pressure comes off. The silence of suspension in the air, and the impact of them hitting the ground again. He’s been living those noises for some time now. Falling asleep to them in videos.

Langa sees Adam before Adam sees him. Even the driver who had brought him here remains quiet as they watch him skate around the bowl Langa vaguely recognizes as a drained swimming pool rather than a fixture explicitly meant for skating, catching an insane amount of air with every upward pass that speaks volumes of the momentum he’s built up. 

When he finally does notice them, he comes out of the next jump without so much as a huff of exertion, landing light on his feet and smiling after kicking his skateboard up to hold under his arm. 

It should look corny, but it’s a surprisingly natural sight.

Langa’s starting to wonder if there’s an occasion other than S where Adam doesn’t wear such business-forward clothing. More than that, he’s starting to wonder if there’s a trick to skateboarding at Adam’s level that he can only learn by wearing formal attire himself. Those shoes might look expensive, but he knows even from a thankfully lacking experience in wearing such things that dress shoes are awkward and slippery and he doubts even whatever brand Adam is wearing is meant to endure the scuffs skateboarding brings.

Maybe, though, the care taken in avoiding those sorts of scuffs is what accounts for Adam’s careful balance on a board, and maybe that goes for all of the rest of his overdressing, too, from his tightly tailored trousers up to the cinch of his vest and the somewhat crooked tie that he one-handedly adjusts now.

“Hello, Langa,” Adam greets first, oozing the kind of over-familiar warmth Langa’s rapidly getting used to.

Oh. He was ogling. He’s thankful to be snapped out of that. 

“And Tadashi…” This greeting, if it can be called that, is not so warm.

The man beside him—Tadashi, is it?—speaks with honorifics. With a posture that stands tall but somehow gives Langa the impression of a wilting flower under what he’ll also admit is a particularly withering gaze from Adam.

“Ainosuke. I should return the car to the front. I’ll leave you two to it. Ca-”

Adam drops the skateboard to the ground. Tadashi doesn’t flinch at the sound of its wheels banging against the ground.

It’s plain, the skateboard, unlike the one Langa has had aimed directly at him at Crazy Rock. It feels best to focus on that, rather than whatever is brewing between the two men in his company, because there is definitely _something_ Langa feels he’s not privy to. It’s thick; lead in the air, and Tadashi just lets it wash over him.

“No. It’s not going anywhere, I’m sure, so it’s not a problem. Why don’t you stick around? You were once such an eager teacher, it surprises me that you want to leave so soon... You don’t mind an audience, do you, Langa?”

Langa balks, not expecting to be addressed during this. He glances over at Tadashi who does not return the look in any capacity. 

Despite the question being directed at him, Langa doesn’t feel like it’s his answer to give.

“I… Guess not,” he finally says. It’s the answer Adam wanted, he’s pretty sure, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like the _right_ one.

Adam looks pleased. Tadashi looks… The same as he ever is, in Langa’s limited knowledge.

Tadashi takes a very shallow bow, and then a few steps backwards like he’s clearing the floor for his betters, all while Langa tries to feel like that’s not the case.

Adam claps his hands together. “Now! I’ve been looking forward to this. Never mind the limited space, Langa, there is very little I can’t teach you right here. So, what can I help you with...”

Langa hadn’t been thinking of the space as limited. The stones used to pave the area around the former pool are a little bumpier than he’d like, but other than that, there’s not much to complain about. 

The pathway right outside of this sectioned off pool area is even a perfect straightway, though Langa gets the feeling that he hadn’t been ushered in through the back of the manor property for nothing. It’s not like the walls out here are all-encompassing or high enough to block another’s view, were they watching from one of the windows above or passing by, but there’s a strange sense of concealment from prying eyes about it that he can’t place his finger on and feels would shatter if he were to step beyond the wall for longer than it had taken to find his way to this spot.

“I don’t really need help.” 

It’s not the whole truth. When he manages to push away the negativity that had been brewing in him last night, he can acknowledge that in the qualifiers against the other, Joe had seemed… Restrained. 

If he knows anything from snowboarding, it’s that big doesn’t mean slow. On a slope, it means _very_ fast, and being fit and having good reflexes to boot means any issues with skidding out that might arise from “big” and “fast” _aren’t_ issues. Joe’s power could prove to be a big problem if Langa has to go up against him in the main tournament.

But that’s a problem _Langa_ wants to solve. So, no, he doesn’t need help.

Adam either gets that, or is very good at hiding that he doesn’t, because he doesn’t look bothered at what could definitely be interpreted as reproach. 

Truth be told, he looks satisfied. 

“Then, you agreed to come just to spend time with me after all? How flattering.”

He’s not _entirely_ wrong. Some of this had been about spending time with somebody. It didn’t have to be Adam. It could have been Miya, or Hiromi, anybody. It _should_ be Reki.

Most of all, it’s about skateboarding—which just so happens to be more fun with company, and which also just so happens to be an excellent way to make his head go numb and his heart pound, which are two things he could use right now while he waits for clarity to settle in on why it’s such a bad thing if he wants to skate with Adam.

Reki might argue that it’s stupid to _skate with Adam_ to see why it’s _a bad thing to skate with Adam._ He might even be right in that, but in Langa’s opinion…

There’s no better way to make a list of pros and cons than by experiencing them firsthand.

That, and…

There are things he wants addressed. Better here than over messages, or at home when his mom could walk in, or during S when there’s too much going on.

With Tadashi here, Langa assumes he’s going to miss this opportunity for that, too, though. That may be for the best, in a way. Time alone with Adam has proven to be... Difficult for him.

“No… I just… Well, you said before that you’d rather see my improvements on a course anyway, so there’s that. And there are other things you do that aren’t that important in a beef that I might like to try.”

Adam continues to look satisfied, probably at Langa’s remembrance of their encounter outside of his home. One of his eyebrows arches, though, expression moving towards ‘inquisitive’. “What do you think isn’t important?”

Langa looks at that plain skateboard by Adam’s feet. It sure betrays all of the pomp Adam displays at S. He has reservations about suggesting some of Adam’s style isn’t serious when he looks at it and how worn out it is.

“All that… Extra footwork.”

That makes Adam laugh a little. Langa doesn’t even think it’s the sort of indulgent laugh of a man just trying to get into a younger, naive person’s pants. But then, he _is_ a younger and maybe naive person, so he could be wrong.

“An object in motion stays in motion… Is what I could say if you wanted reason to believe it isn’t pointless. But that won’t convince you, I’m sure.”

It might, actually. Langa has already started to weigh out the logistics of the statement. Body movement on top of board movement—it sounds feasible enough.

Adam continues on. “It might not be important after all. It’s more interesting than staying static though. One misstep from me could be an opening for you. Or a hospital visit for someone,” he adds in, offhandedly, like it’s not even an option but he’s humoring it for the hell of it anyway. “Fun things are more fun when there are risks involved, don’t you agree?”

It’s disturbing how quickly a _yes_ forms in Langa’s head and flies out of his mouth. Reki might have been making a point. 

Even words like “hospital” and “risk” just aren’t enough to cram together and spell “danger” to him, though. No matter how many times he thinks it, it’s still translating as _exciting_.

Adam’s own mouth carves a fiendish smile onto his face. He puts a foot to his previously discarded board and disappears over and down the edge of the pool-turned-skate-bowl, turning into the space where it’s widest and flattest instead of coming up on the other curved side. 

“Come, Langa. Tadashi, you watch.”

He’d _almost_ forgotten about Tadashi’s unobtrusive presence just behind him. He spares a look that isn’t returned as the man steps forward to look over the side better. Langa feels a blanket of misplaced guilt settle over him as he gets on his board to roll down and meet Adam.

“There’s nothing special about it,” Adam notes, pushing to get just slightly up on the curve of the bowl and using the momentum it gives him on the roll down. When both feet are on the board, they move so fluidly with it that he may as well be walking on a conveyor belt. 

And as anticlimactic as Adam makes it sound, Langa’s grown used to a skateboard enough by now to know that that kind of controlled, slow movement—especially on wheels that aren’t moving very fast right now, either—is at least a little more difficult than he’s making it out to be. Only, not for the Adam that has so much practice at it.

Langa gets his own momentum going. He wobbles like it’s his first time on a skateboard the moment he tries to take a step that isn’t going to turn into an ollie or grab or any other kind of flip or speed-building motion.

Perturbed, he puts a foot down on the ground to steer himself out of bumping into Adam’s board, briefly abandoning the idea of copying Adam’s fancy footwork. “Wouldn’t it be easier on a flatter surface?” 

“I thought you said you liked risks?”

“I… Do. I wouldn’t really call this risky, though. Just…”

Adam waves away his concerns before he can figure out how to word them. Waves a hand in his direction, too, actually, which Langa regards with muted contempt. Adam’s hand doesn’t drop away.

He hadn’t taken Reki’s hand all those weeks and weeks ago when he’d first started learning to treat a skateboard like a skateboard and now a snowboard, and he sure wasn’t going to take _Adam’s_ now. He’s not afraid of falling, nor does he think he’s going _to_ fall with just this much awkward footwork. Stubbornly, he’d like to keep it so that his father continues to be the last person to have held his hand when he was afraid of that sort of thing anyway.

“Langa,” Adam drawls out, slow as an exhale from a cigarette, “this time, I’m not trying to hold your hand to protect you from the ground. You said you wanted to dance, so let’s dance.”

He’s pretty sure he never really said that. 

Still, he ends up taking Adam’s hand.

He’s swiftly pulled closer and instinctively puts his other foot back on his board, letting Adam control the motion here. 

The only motion Adam makes once their boards are nearly touching, though, is the one where he lifts Langa’s hand up to eye-level to tilt it and admire the watch around his wrist. Langa smartly averts his gaze, staring at the drags of wheel marks etched by time and consistent force into the concrete across the way. Adam’s lips are butterfly-soft against his knuckles, and not entirely disagreeable. 

“Ah, if I had my way,” Adam says, but he doesn’t finish the statement before he’s pulling Langa along, so easily pushing a foot onto the teen’s board to nudge him into position and make him aware of what his own feet should be doing.

To the best of his abilities, Langa tries to concentrate on the hands-on lesson. The hands-on part is the hard part, though, and he’s keenly aware of how out in the open they are. Adam is not subtle about where his hands end up, and Langa is not too proud to admit that he doesn’t keep them from settling along various points from waist to hip. 

Somehow, the undisturbed windows of the large house in the near distance are more nerve-wracking than the crowd at S.

And even more so? Tadashi’s gaze above them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I get the feeling that Adam's big ass house is meant to be in Tokyo closer to the Diet building rather than in Okinawa and that's what all the traveling this man does is about but I just. Don't have it in me to bother with that sort of detail... Imagine if I'd had Langa get picked up in a helicopter... 
> 
> I didn't think Tadashi was going to play much of a role in this but I've been polluting my brain with thoughts of how sexy it would be if he was a cousin or some illegitimate son and therefore Adam's half brother and just mistreated all the time anyway and now I'm like "I'm obsessed with you, actually". Lmao it won't come true or anything but sometimes you need to use that energy to your advantage while you have it
> 
> Lmfao. Anyway. Uhhh! I've got porn planned for the next chapter, probably? This fic's so tame, I'm sorry lmao!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew!!! This chapter got long on me! And it's not edited, as usual... Like, extra, super unedited because the moment I saw the final word count I didn't even feel like going back to do that cursory half-read you do to at least make sure things make sense...... Hahahahahaaaaaa... Listen, I'm posting this at like 3am, so. I'll hit myself over it at a better hour.
> 
> I like how I keep saying/thinking that I'm going to stop holding canon's hand, but then I just go and hold it a lot anyway. This chapter at least makes an attempt at divorcing it, lmao...

During their “dancing”, Langa spends more time feeling like a puppet on strings than he does otherwise, admittedly, what with Adam’s hands on him or gripping his own, but when he’s finally released from Adam’s hold he can feel the difference in his own confidence. The level of fluid movement Adam achieves even on the short street board he’s using is more than Langa can manage on his own, but he makes progress. If it can be called that. 

At some point, they drop the dancing altogether. At some point, they seem to silently agree to try and outdo the other in tricks that Langa’s mostly only ever seen in videos and skate to their heart’s content. Adam praises him even though he himself surpasses Langa in just about every regard.

For now.

It’s a guilty pleasure to think. 

The tricks they do aren’t ones that will be necessary during the tournament by any means, after all. It’s bad enough that he’s going against Reki’s wishes in participating in that, and here he is already thinking about the next chance he’ll get to have Adam alone—mostly alone—, and all to himself—mostly to himself—like this so that they can do something like this again. 

He just likes being on his skateboard and having the company, or something like that. It wouldn’t really matter if it were Reki or Adam or anybody else right now.

But Adam doesn’t try to dissuade him out of trying things he knows to be dangerous. Adam has this whole private—mostly private—area and probably dozens more for them to try out, if what is essentially ownership of S and this property is anything to go by. Reki is encouraging, but Adam is challenging. It doesn’t make one any better or worse than the other. 

It’s just… He can see Reki any day. 

He _does_ see Reki every day. Adam’s right. If Reki isn’t going to take advantage of the time they could be spending together, then this…

This is fine.

For now.

“How about a break?”

Adam’s voice cuts him out of his reverie. The man is already out of the bowl, nudging his board out of the way to approach Tadashi. Langa can only sort of see their exchange from down in the depth of the bowl. Adam’s hand flicking out in Tadashi’s direction. Tadashi pulling out of his pocket and sticking something between Adam’s outstretched fingers that Langa only realizes is a cigarette once Adam puts it to his lips. Tadashi has a lighter, too, that he brandishes when Adam leans in, cupping the flame as he brings it up to light it for the man even though there’s nothing that puts it at risk of going out.

From this angle, it almost looks like…

It looks intimate, is what it looks like. Langa bites at the inside of his cheek before shooting up the side of the pool to join them at surface level. 

“I don’t really need a break,” he says, even though he’s already come up here. He’s a little sweaty because it’s that kind of muggy day-turning-evening outside and they’ve been doing this for a while, but otherwise he thinks he has plenty of energy left to exert. To think that Adam had been dogging him about stamina. 

“Mm.” Adam turns to him as he puffs on the cigarette, and then turns his head on the exhale. The smoke goes Tadashi’s way, a great big cloud that has no summer breeze to disperse it, and Tadashi doesn’t so much as lift a hand to wave it elsewhere, though Langa sees his nose crinkle. “By all means, then, keep going. Put on a show.”

He doesn’t think he can. Or rather, he can, but he’s not sure he has the material to impress Adam. Not that he’s concerned with that, or anything. That, and Adam’s command is _charged_ , or at least it _feels_ that way, though with exactly what he’s not sure, and they have company. He shrugs, uncomfortable, and watches Tadashi watching him. 

“… I could use some water, maybe, actually.”

It’s a statement full of magic words that have Adam flicking his ashes at Tadashi’s feet and tipping his head in the direction of the house.

“Tadashi.”

Langa’s never heard a name carry so many unspoken instructions.

“... Yes.”

Tadashi takes a few steps, presumably to go inside and fetch water. Adam puts his free hand out to stop him before he can get too far.

“Actually. Langa, would you like to come inside?”

Tadashi makes a noise. A protesting one, Langa thinks, one that nearly cuts through his own.

“Uh.” He does _want_ to. Just to see it, what it’s like in there. He bets he could get lost inside. “Aren’t we still going to skate?” That feels like the safest way to avoid confirming or denying.

“That’s up to you, now, isn’t it? It’s only going to get later and later. I’m sure you’d like to be home before it gets _too_ dark and your mother worries, so how we spend the remaining time is in your hands. I can cut this break short if you’d like, and we can get right back to it…”

He’s not so sure that he loves having to make the decision. One part of him is firm in its wish to skate—it’s what he’d come here for to start with, what he was snubbing a friend in favor of. The other, though, is wondering about what Adam might have in store for him inside, and if it is anything like what they’d done so many days and days ago in his own home. 

Both parts are pretty rotten.

He’s gotten a decent fill of skateboarding today already, though, hasn’t he? It would put him in poor form if he overworked himself before the tournament.

“... Let’s go inside, then.”

With that, Adam grins at him and motions Tadashi off again. Langa hesitates before taking a step as if to follow, but Adam stops him. 

“Stay with me while I finish this,” he insists around the cigarette that’s already in his mouth again.

It doesn’t leave Langa with much room to object. He steps back again, putting his board down so he can shove his hands in his pockets. Even if he’s anxious, it’s better like this. He’d rather not go chasing after Tadashi and be alone with the guy again.

He finds it difficult to be alone with Adam, too, though.

When he thinks about it, there’s not much they can talk about, is there?

They’re from two different worlds. Age separates them, certainly, though he’s not even sure what Adam’s is—older than him, for sure, but younger than his mother? There’s school versus a career—high school and politics, no less. Even just the place they’re standing now is a stark contrast to anywhere Langa has ever lived. He’s certainly not about to vent to Adam about his friendship troubles, and he’s sure Adam wouldn’t go putting the burden of his work woes on his shoulders, either.

The things they’ve got in common are…

Skateboarding. A fondness for competition, maybe. Langa’s mother, in a way.

Putting it into perspective like that is sort of painful. 

But. Now’s as good a time as any.

He waits for Adam to blow smoke again before speaking up so that the silence doesn’t swallow him up for so long that it snuffs out his determination.

“Why my mom?”

Adam’s hardly perturbed. Langa can surmise that he’s been expecting this. Probably, he’d been expecting it sooner, even. 

“Oh, you won’t like my answer.”

“Try me,” Langa says, even though he’s sure Adam is right.

“Well, if you’re thinking I looked her up just for this,” here, Adam circles his cigarette-holding hand between the two of them, a plume of smoke trailing the path, “you can put that out of your mind.” 

That’s actually a huge relief. Possibly the most burning question in his brain, too. Even if its answer may be a lie.

Adam goes on. “It was pure coincidence that we met. Work related. Equally pure coincidence to hear your name out of her. Not to concern you, but I’m under quite a lot of pressure to settle down with a respectable woman…”

Right. Any work done in a hospital is respectable. Way more respectable than politics, Langa thinks. He wonders what else Adam qualifies under the words “respectable woman” and why it has to be his mother that fits that bill and not somebody, anybody, else, because surely somebody with Adam’s status in life can choose just about anyone to court. He’s not particularly interested in hearing just how they’d gotten to flirting enough for Adam to ask her out.

“I don’t want you to marry my mom,” he blurts out, grimacing at the outburst and the very thought of it. It’s a childish reaction.

Adam barks a laugh. “I don’t intend to. It’s just convenient to have the pressure ease up for the time being.”

Langa’s satisfaction only lasts for a moment. His mother should not be a _convenience_. 

“... You can’t break her heart, either.”

To his surprise, Adam doesn’t laugh or smile at that. He takes a long, slow drag from his cigarette, seeming to mull over Langa’s words, and when he’s had enough of that he huffs the smoke out and drops the cigarette, stepping on it and gesturing for Langa to follow him towards the house. Which he does, right after scrambling to pick his board up again.

“I promise that I won’t.”

Maybe Langa should take the promise with a grain of salt. Maybe it’s a little comforting not to, though. Or maybe it _would_ be comforting, if not for the fact that he knows Adam wouldn’t be the only one to blame, and if not for the fact that Langa starts to think that Adam may have been better off saying: _“_ I _won’t have to_. _”_

* * *

The halls are as dead quiet and empty as they are ornately decorated with paintings that could probably pay Langa’s way through life. He had been half-expecting to see a dozen maids and the like dusting away after every footstep he and Adam dared to put against the carpet. 

It’s strangely dark, too, which Langa isn’t sure whether to commend or question. Anybody living in a place like this surely wouldn’t worry about things like the electricity bill—but there’s merit in conserving the energy at all. 

Given that Tadashi is the only other person Langa has seen other than the man he’s currently following now, and he’s not even sure where Tadashi’s gone to, this empty, dark place gives him the impression that Adam leads a depressingly lonely life.

Maybe that’s why he’s been invited here.

He’s not about to pity an adult man living in the lap of luxury, though. It just… Makes him think. Makes him uneasy, too, as they go upstairs and down more hallways and still don’t run into a single soul. Adam doesn’t strike up conversation, either, and Langa’s not sure what _he’d_ say if he tried.

Eventually, though, they do run into Tadashi again, which Langa is shocked to find gives him a sense of relief. The man is standing outside a set of pattern-carved wooden doors, which he opens into what Langa hopes will be—

Well, he doesn’t know. A dining room? A sitting room, parlor, whatever it is houses of this size come equipped with? 

Anything but a bedroom.

A bedroom is exactly what he gets, though, because of course it is.

It is unfairly, unnecessarily huge. He finds, even, that he’s half right in expecting a sitting room, because there is plenty of space for the table and chairs that he doubts Adam even uses despite a dust-free bookshelf within reaching distance. 

They’ll use it now, he suspects, but only because that’s where Tadashi—he assumes—has placed a pitcher of water and glasses.

After seeing how big the bed is, Langa sort of wishes it were more than water, because he could surely use a real drink if it’ll take the edge off of how intimidated he’s suddenly feeling.

“If there’s anything else you need…” Tadashi trails off. 

Adam looks at him. Langa is suddenly aware of the idea that no request would be too big or too small. 

“No, I’m good,” he mumbles, gripping tighter at his board. 

“I could take that to the car,” Tadashi adds, and Langa gets the feeling that he’s trying to drag this out. Like he’s reluctant to leave the two of them alone but knows that he’ll have to anyway.

“No, I’m good,” Langa repeats, feeling a sense of déjà vu, and hears Adam scoffing.

“Yes, Tadashi is not somebody you want to trust where skateboards are concerned. Put that anywhere you’d like, Langa,” he tells him, and then flips both hands towards Tadashi, towards the doors. “ _You_ can go.”

Tadashi, briefly, looks as lost as Langa feels. He nods, though, backing out of the doorway and shutting the doors tight behind himself. Their closing feels very final. Langa sets his board down by them although he’d _like_ to keep it close for the grounding that it provides him. He watches Adam pour two glasses of water.

“... Why are we here?”

“Where? This room?”

“Yeah.” 

Adam sits, but not in one of the chairs. Instead, he goes with glass in hand to the end of his bed, which is lofty enough from the ground that he’s more leaning against the edge than he is fully sitting down.

“It’s rare that I’m able to have guests… I’m sorry, did you want a full tour? I thought it was pretty clear what you’d be getting into by coming inside.”

Langa would like to pretend that it wasn’t. That he hadn’t spared even a single thought that they might wind up in a bedroom. That, yes, he’d really expected and wanted a tour of massive dining halls and kitchens and in-home theaters and whatever else this place had to offer. That he’d rather be roaming up and down halls and stopping at each painting and photograph like it were an art gallery.

The truth is, though, he knows he’s been kidding himself. He’d had his curiosity sated about the interior of this place practically from the moment he’d stepped through the back door of it and learned that it was every bit as big and expensive as it looked from the outside. The moment he’d realized it was just him and Adam going up and down those halls, thoughts of exploring luxury had gone out of his mind, and the only reason a bedroom had seemed daunting was because it had been exactly what he was thinking should be the natural conclusion to this.

After all. It’s not like they’ve got much else in common.

He stammers, but he doesn’t manage to say much of anything.

There’s more than a ghost of a smile on Adam’s face. He sips at his water like it _is_ a drink worth drinking, watching Langa struggle, and then crosses back to where he’d been, setting the glass down again. Langa hates to think even through all of that, he’s still standing near the door like this, stuck to the spot.

“I’m not about to force you into anything. We can sit and chat instead, if that’s all you can handle.”

There are a dozen other ways Adam could have chosen to word his sentence. Langa knows it. He knows Adam knows it. He hadn’t chosen one of those, though, he’d gone with this configuration that Langa can’t help but feel compelled to respond to like a shark to blood in the water, except Adam is definitely the one doing all the circling.

“It’s not like that,” Langa says, finally walking forward for his glass. His throat feels dry and the water is wonderfully refreshing on top of acting as a distraction from this _thing_ they’re getting into. “I don’t feel forced or anything.” Not in so many words, at least. “I want…”

He pauses to think for too long. Adam looks expectant. 

“You want..?”

He just. Wants. He doesn’t know how to tell Adam all of the things he wants. They aren’t all the sorts of wants that money can buy. Some of them even involve walking out of those stupidly opulent bedroom doors and not looking back.

Right now, though, most of them…

“I’m not really in the right condition for much now, though,” he says as he puts the glass down, fanning himself with a hand to get the point across. He doesn’t really mean it as an excuse, necessarily. He’s been out all day, though. School, the rush home, a stuffy car ride, the stifling, sweat-inducing air of the afternoon turning evening all barely wicked away only by the wind flow generated around his skateboarding figure. He thinks that if Adam touched him now, all the sweat that’s dried at the nape of his neck would come back and melt him down into a puddle.

And touch him Adam does. Right now. He’s suddenly very close—which may as well be the norm—, hand snaking around his waist—which may as well be the norm. 

“I don’t mind at all. Do you think there’s any situation where I’d find you dirty? Don’t you think you’re called _SNOW_ for a reason?”

Because his hair and skin are a good deal lighter than the next guy’s, he thinks. Because he used to snowboard, he thinks. Snow can be dirty, too, and he’s not so keen on whatever connotation of purity Adam has injected, but it all makes sense, coming from him, considering…

“That’s not all _you_ call me,” Langa points out, and Adam leans into him, nearly dipping him over.

“That’s true. To me, you are my _EVE_ , above all else. Do you dislike that?”

Yes. No. Sort of. Maybe not. 

He thinks of the watch on his wrist. How easily he could pretend it belongs to somebody else. How it feels like it _should_ belong to somebody else.

He doesn’t dislike the idea that “Eve” brings distance to all of this. 

Eve doesn’t have to worry about the feelings of one Nanako Hasegawa or Reki or _Langa_. 

“No. It’s fine. It’s good.” 

He pushes up into Adam. To straighten his spine again from where the man’s bending it, for one. To be closer of his _own_ accord instead of Adam’s. To close the gap and kiss him.

It’s not enough action to wrest control from Adam, but at least now the playing field feels more level. Langa can feel the man’s fingertips grazing up his sides, under his shirt, and a moment later they’re tugging at the fabric. Langa takes the cue, pulling away just enough to yank it up and over his head. He’s not shy, but he doesn’t give Adam much time to appreciate the sight unfettered before his arms are drawing in so he can fumble with the buttons on Adam’s vest. 

This isn't going to be like last time. He’s refusing to be the only one exposed around here, even by this much. 

“You’re wearing too much,” he says offhandedly, meant as a jab because _what kind of person honestly wears all this to skateboard in_ , but it must come off as a little desperate, because Adam’s laughing as his hands find Langa’s own to help him out.

“And you’re unexpectedly frantic,” Adam tells him, “I seem to recall you saying we’d make up for our quickness another time…”

He knows his cheeks are going rosy. It’s embarrassing enough to think about that time without having his words thrown back at him. “We don’t have much time now, either, though, so… You’re the one who led me here without preparing better.” The accusation is also a desperate attempt at saving face, he knows.

Adam looks thoughtful as he starts removing his dress shirt as well. He concedes to Langa’s complaining, humming an affirmative, and Langa is struck by how natural this is suddenly feeling despite his embarrassment. It should be awkward to stand so closely to a grown man, shirtless and waiting for him to be as well, conversing like this is just another day for the two of them. 

“You’re right.” The dress shirt is semi-carelessly draped over the back of the chair. Adam reaches out to tuck hair behind Langa’s ear. Langa thinks he might be kissed again, but he’s only leaning in to ask him, “What should I have prepared next time, then? A bed scattered with rose petals?”

He thinks that rose petals are the _least_ Adam could or would do, so to hear something that normal is almost a miracle. Langa snorts. Adam doesn’t seem to find the noise unattractive.

“I don’t need that sor-”

He falters, drawn to looking at Adam’s forearm where it has yet to drop back down. Had it been such an angry shade of red the last time he’d seen this part of him? It’s no road rash, but it tells of some kind of impact. A lot of it. He’d feel rude for staring if not for Adam taking notice and actively tipping his hand to show off his arm.

“Even when you fall off of your board, you still feel a love for the sport, don’t you?”

Langa’s not sure what that has to do with anything. He nods anyway, because it’s the truth.

“This sort of love, it’s like that, too.” Adam runs his fingers over the redness. His other arm is in much the same state. 

“I don’t get what you’re saying,” Langa admits. He doesn’t want to think about there being more gaps that broaden the gap between Adam and himself, and he definitely can’t wrap his head around what Adam is trying to explain now.

“Think nothing of it, then. How do you show love, little Langa?”

Langa sort-of shrugs, pulling Adam’s hand towards himself to brush lips over the reddened skin just above his wrist. It might not be painful now, but it must have been, and his parents taught him that a little love and care goes a long way to soothe hurts. “I don’t know anything about that, either,” he also admits, but this time his tone is a little more humble, maybe embarrassed, than it is confused. He doesn’t want to look at Adam’s face and get even a faint idea of what the man might be thinking.

“Let’s find out, then.” 

Adam gently pries his hand free of Langa’s grasp and puts his hands on the boy’s hips, walking him backwards towards the bed. The beat of Langa’s heart far exceeds the pace of their footsteps, and it jumps into his throat when the backs of his legs hit against the bed frame. 

He doesn’t need any prodding or pushing to saddle up onto the mattress like Adam clearly wants, though in scooting back towards the pillows he has to pause for long enough to remind himself that he’d never taken his shoes off at the door—nor had Adam, for that matter, which at least takes away most of the feeling of being rude. Adam starts unlacing them for him, an action that Langa somehow feels he should object to or apologize for. His discomfort must be palpable.

“Relax,” Adam bids him, and gestures for Langa to lay back. He does, more or less, dropping onto his elbows and regretting maintaining the view when Adam pulls one of Langa’s sock-covered feet up towards his bare chest and digs his thumbs into the ball of it, dragging them down the arch and to his heel. 

Langa’s so mortified when he feels his toes curl that he almost thinks about kicking Adam’s chest, nearly doing so on reflex. “You don’t have to do all that.”

“No? You hate it that much?”

“I don’t hate it,” he confesses, letting his elbows give underneath him so he can slump his back to the mattress. It’s firmer than he’d thought it would be, but still unbelievably plush, enough that he’s not upset about his head missing the pillows. “It’s just… Awkward.”

“But it feels good?” Adam peels his sock off before assisting his leg back down and doing the same with the other sock, no sudden foot massage. 

“Sure. But.”

“But you’d deprive yourself of things that feel good because you think they’re strange or dirty,” Adam chides. 

Which. Yeah. Kind of.

When it’s said out loud like that, it does seem pretty stupid. He realizes it’s a bit overly critical to dive in headfirst to this thing with Adam and then shy away from intimacy beyond his expectations.

And he’s not even really sure where the expectations are to begin with.

“I told you before, Langa, I’d like to take my time-”

“Time that we don’t really have.”

Adam shifts, probably toeing off his own footwear, and then starts to undo his belt. Langa pretends not to watch. Pretends not to watch when his pants drop to the floor, too, and definitely doesn’t start shimmying out of his own even though he’s not been given any particular directive to. It’s just something to do to keep himself from studying the lines of Adam’s torso or boxer briefs too closely. 

Langa’s not even sure why he’s been coy with his own staring when Adam makes no secret out of watching the way his hips lift off of the bed to get his pants down. The man would have to be blind not to see him doing so, of course, but it still makes Langa lose a little bit of his cool when combined with how he feels Adam’s hands at his ankles again, helping him pull his jeans down and then completely off.

They calmly regard each other, all too quiet—the silence may be for Langa’s own sake, he realizes, and thinks Adam is at least a little merciful—before Adam starts climbing into the bed, following each motion Langa takes in squirming backwards to give the man room, finally making it back towards the mound of pillows stacked against the headboard. Not like it matters when Adam’s set on staying parallel to him, looming.

Adam speaking up reminds Langa that not too much time has passed at all since the last words spoken, actually, but it’s felt like an eternity of apprehensive jitters. “So you’ve pointed out already. We have much more now than we did before, though. I’m starting to think you’re just impatient.”

Impatient. Or nervous. Both.

“Maybe.”

“Teenagers,” Adam teases, and it makes Langa’s heart stutter in a bad kind of way to have it acknowledged, even if it’s lighthearted. “I’d bet you hardly take your time even when alone with yourself.”

He thinks on that as Adam settles back and takes hold of a calf, bending Langa’s leg at the knee to kiss the inside of it, up, up, and up. He’s overly attentive about kissing at every inch of skin, which Langa might find overwhelming if not for his mind being preoccupied.

It’s not a completely incorrect assessment. Langa has school. Skateboarding. Homework. Chores. A doting mother. Showers, bedtime, and the rare moment where he’s home alone with nothing else to do are just about the only opportunities he gets, and they’re often rushed jobs to take the edge off and get it out of his system—

Usually. Lately, he’s been getting a little more thoughtful about the time he takes and the ways he goes about touching himself. For no particular reason at all.

“You’re wrong,” he chokes out, because Adam’s hand is cupping him over his underwear, stroking against the fabric. “I take… All the time I need.”

“Mhm… Should I have you demonstrate?”

Do what now? In front of Adam, like it’s not bad enough to be almost naked in front of him and to have come embarrassingly early the last time they’d been together in a situation remotely like this one? 

Like he needs Adam giving him pointers or timing him or something like they’re at S.

“No way.”

“Shame. Another time?”

“Worry about this time first.”

Adam laughs and moves up to kiss him, abandoning his tentative erection. Though disappointed, Langa welcomes it, greedily opens his mouth to it if only to direct their attention to something else.

And because he wants to.

They kiss for so long that Langa’s pulse stops thrumming hummingbird-first as he relaxes, though it spikes with every light touch of Adam’s fingertips against his skin. He’s emboldened only enough to bring one of his own hands into Adam’s hair, not the least bit certain of what else to offer, but regardless of how satisfying it may or may not be to Adam, it’s satisfying to _Langa_ to feel it soften under his touch, carefully slicked back style falling out strand-by-strand. 

“Not so worried about time now?” Adam asks when they finally break apart. Sort of break apart. Adam’s tongue still manages to swipe across his lips to catch the building saliva there. 

That’s right; they are working with a loose time constraint. The panic the reminder gives him must show on his face, because Adam is quick to grin and lower his pelvis to grind against him. Give him something else to think about. 

A lot of something else to think about. Adam flips over onto the mattress and manhandles him until Langa is straddling his hips while he’s propped up and looking very at-ease against the pillows, if a bit rumpled due to his messy hair. Langa thinks it looks better that way, all wild and out of place, but he’d rather not admit to himself that that may just be because it reminds him of the ADAM he has come to know from S.

“If you’re worried about time,” oh, Langa can’t help but to think there’s another part to this sentence, something like _and your performance_ , but maybe he's just projecting, “then maybe you should set the pace. I did want you to show me how you love, anyway…”

Set the pace? He’s not stupid enough to ask it out loud. He _gets it,_ what the expectation is here. Their position alone is enough. He’s just real goddamn embarrassed to think about rutting against Adam and giving him more of a reason to equate him to just some horny teenager.

But…

“Uh- yeah, okay-”

_But_.

He gives an experimental roll of his hips. He doesn’t need to look at Adam’s face to know that’s enough to be adequate; it’s enough to feel the twitch of interest his cock gives underneath him. 

This isn’t bad.

It’s kind of, sort of, really good.

Sitting on top here. Getting _to_ look as much as he’s being looked at. Feeling like he’s got at least one hand on the reins and that, even if Adam is the one who put him here, it’s Langa who gets to call the shots. And he doesn’t even have to be completely naked to do it.

Yeah. He can work with this, actually.

He’s not so sure it will prove anything about the way he loves, but it can at least prove that he’s got the coordination and wherewithal to do more than wriggle helplessly in Adam’s bed. It’s easier to decide where to put his hands like this, too, with all of Adam’s exposed torso on display. Or, maybe not decide, because he finds himself touching all over instead, from chest to abs. It’s less sexual than it is sort of scientific, he’ll mentally acknowledge, because he’s impressed with how Adam manages to hide all of this under his clothing. He shouldn’t be surprised that the man has a core that matches the strength of it he’s seen on the skate course, but he is anyway. 

And anyway, how much more sexual does it get than rocking his hips and feeling Adam respond to the motion? Feeling himself respond, too. He likes the hitch he hears in Adam’s breath when he puts more force into it, likes knowing that it’s not just him who can sit here panting like a dog in heat even if Adam is considerably more composed.

He won’t be for too long, Langa thinks, feeling more confident with every fluid motion. 

Confident may not be the right word. He wants to raise the stakes somehow.

And it seems painful, anyway, the way Adam’s cock strains against its fabric confines. He lifts himself enough to drag that pesky waistband down, taking a breathless moment to marvel over the fact that this is the first time he’s really seeing a dick that isn’t his own outside of a bathroom, locker room, or porn. It’s proportions aren’t so pornographic, but it’s bigger than his own; a heavy, firm weight in his hand. It stands out against the pale skin of his fingers. He almost loses sight of the goal, touching it just like this—

“Langa,” Adam tries, sounding a little out of it. Yeah, Langa likes that. “I’m glad that you seem to have… Found your stride, but…”

“Y-yeah.” Yeah, he agrees. With whatever Adam is saying. 

He’s not completely sure how well it’s going to go when he pulls his own cock out and fists the two of them together, struggling to keep his grasp, but it _feels_ good, and that’s the point, so he’ll take it even if it’s clumsy enough for Adam to reach down to help.

Is it _enough_ , though? 

“Fuck—I think-” There’s that English. It’s a whole lot easier to speak in and to think in it in this context.

Adam gives his hand—their cocks, rather, he thinks dizzily, but it probably is meant to be reassuring—a squeeze. 

“That’s all right,” the man comforts, still short of breath but perhaps somewhat disappointed, and Langa realizes with burning shame that Adam thinks he’s already about to spend himself, which he wouldn’t be totally wrong about if not for Langa tightening the grip on his composure.

“I- think you should fuck me.” He’s the one to say it, but it sort of punches the air right out of him.

“You never fail to surprise,” Adam says, flipping from disappointed to intrigued in an instant. 

Langa has to stop his hand to keep from coming undone too soon. He wants to keep surprising Adam. The right way, not the way that’s no surprise at all.

“You- you basically said… Not to deprive myself of what feels good.”

“So I did. But is it something you can handle?”

“I _can_.”

He doesn’t miss how Adam’s eyes rake down his body, coming to rest on where they’re loosely tethered by their combined hands. He wonders how he must look.

“Even as you are now?”

Like a blissed out, desperate, sweaty teenager with his dick out, he guesses, though Adam’s eyes are dark enough that he thinks that might not be such a bad thing. 

_“Fuck me.”_

“Your wish,” Adam says, not finishing the sentence. He flips them over again, so quickly that Langa doesn’t see it coming until he’s flat on his back and his hands are pinned against the mattress on either side of himself by Adam’s. His face is close. The sun is fast setting out the window, and it reflects off of the bedspread and casts the man in devilish red light. “This is how you love, then. With all of yourself. I thought so—I wonder how else.”

He wishes his boner would at least have the courtesy to flag a little when Adam is so… Intense. It doesn’t, though, not at all, and it especially doesn’t as Adam sweeps a hand against it in the process of getting them both fully undressed. He’s not at all sure where his underwear lands.

Nothing has really happened yet, but he’s wondering if he _should be_ wondering whether or not he should regret this.

The answer is… No, he’s pretty sure. Absolutely positive, even, and he thinks that Reki could never understand this, whatever it is he feels when that is a question to be entertained.

Thoughts of Reki have no place here. 

He’s thinking so much that he almost misses Adam digging underneath the pillows for what Langa can only assume is lube. He’s not sure how to feel about its close proximity and what it might mean about Adam’s sex life.

“Why-”

It’s probably better not to question it. Adam puts a finger to his lips anyway, even though he hadn’t been planning on finishing the question.

“You’ve gotten out of demonstrating, but you should at least tell me how experienced you are with this sort of thing.”

He’s not really asking about sex itself, Langa realizes. He already knows the answer to that, if not because he’d been outright told the last time they were together then because of what a mess Langa is probably looking like right now. 

One had been too little. Two had been good, sufficient, once he’d figured out how to angle them. 

“Three,” is what he says, though, nothing more than a whisper. It’s the most complete answer Adam is going to get right now.

It’s an answer Adam likes well enough, though, even if he can likely tell that Langa hasn’t gotten very _far_ with three fingers.

“Good.” It’s a pleased rumble. “The stretch won’t have you backing down, then… Although, I doubt it would anyway.”

He doubts it, too. Which is why they should _do it already_.

“Can we just…”

Adam doesn’t keep him waiting beyond the first syllable. He uncaps the lube, as generous with it as he is with his supposed ‘love’ as he spills it across his fingers, letting it drop from them and onto Langa’s belly—it’s a little cold; he tenses at it. Then, Langa is watching warily as the first thing Adam touches is himself, gripping his cock in his lubricated palm and stroking. 

He’s on the verge of saying that past experience with three fingers doesn’t mean they should jump straight into _that_ when Adam smiles at what must surely be a horrified expression on Langa’s face.

“I don’t mean to neglect you, my Eve. I only want to look at you for a moment, while you are shameless and in my bed… If you could see yourself…”

He can forgive the sin of lust, here, then. Because if Adam could see _himself_ … 

If Adam could see himself, he’d realize Langa has good reason to feel impatient now. 

Not for too much longer. Adam leans over him again and drags fingers through the pool of lube gathered on Langa’s stomach, and for a second Langa thinks he’s going to start painting patterns of it across his skin, but the hand continues dragging downwards instead, avoiding his cock—much to Langa’s chagrin _and_ gratefulness, what with the state he’s already in—to circle and press not too far beyond it between his cheeks instead, the other hand nudging—massaging, more like—at his thigh to get Langa to spread his legs further apart.

It’s his middle finger, Langa thinks, absurd as it is, because he doesn’t know what else to think about—the sensation is and isn’t what he expects. It slips in with relative ease and is just like when he manages to get the time to do this to himself, all sorts of awkward and, honestly, mediocre at first. 

Except, actually—

Adam’s middle finger is longer than his own. It’s not restricted by angles Langa himself can’t immediately manage, either. It presses _just_ right, giving Langa the impression that Adam is less concerned with stretching him at the moment and more concerned with making sure Langa knows that Adam knows _exactly_ what he’s doing.

Adam’s unoccupied hand drifts to his side now, and he kisses the groan right out of Langa’s mouth, not hesitating to add another finger by the time he’s licked across Langa’s teeth.

He spreads his fingers apart inside of Langa, equal parts methodical and over-attentive. The discomfort of being stretched is staggered with touches that have Langa’s hips involuntarily bucking upwards. 

Adam has since stopped only kissing his lips, which Langa is quietly dismayed by. He’s moved on to his neck, his collarbones. He doesn’t seem at all concerned with not leaving visible marks this time. Langa doesn’t have it in him to protest, either, so maybe he’s not very concerned himself.

He’s so preoccupied with the way Adam’s tongue has found its way to one of his nipples that he hardly even notices a third finger slipping inside of him until it’s scissoring with the others in a way that’s impossible not to hiss through his teeth over. A fraction too rough, he thinks.

“Th-that’s…”

“Too much?”

Once again, the way Adam says it… It’s not really asking about his comfort, is it? It’s another challenge. He thinks. Or is overthinking. It’s hard to concentrate at all right now, though.

“No.”

Adam hums at that, kissing Langa’s naked chest right over his heart. It doesn’t especially do much to soothe the burn of his fingers inside of him. 

At last, Adam withdraws his fingers, carelessly wiping them on the blankets. Langa half-heartedly wonders if it is Tadashi who does his laundry, but puts the idea out of his mind as quickly as it comes. If Reki is off-limits to be thinking about, then the man who is most certainly aware of what’s going on in this room right now is _especially_ off-limits.

“ _Langa_.”

This _is_ a question, somehow. Langa finds himself nodding, and that’s all Adam needs to reach underneath him, cupping Langa’s ass in his hands and hoisting him up that way. It startles a noise out of him, gets his knees reflexively bending so that his feet can find purchase against the bedspread like he’s planning to push away from it—

Adam doesn’t let him, of course, and Langa recognizes it as a blatant overreaction when all Adam is doing is shoving a pillow or two underneath his hips. He looks amused, which is not the expression Langa would like to see on the face of a man who is now currently gripping his cock again to further freshly lube it up and line it against him.

They’re doing it just like this, then, huh? Face-to-face? Why had that not been obvious already by all the dry humping and fingering? On top of the pre-existing embarrassment, Langa’s face, no, his whole head, feels hot. 

Adam spreads him apart as best as he can with one hand, and then—

And then Adam is _spreading him apart_.

It is a slow, slow slide inside. 

Langa wishes he could shut his ears against the noises he makes, because he doesn’t think they’re sexy so much as they’re involuntarily twisting their way out of him, strained. That would mean not hearing the groan of pleasure that rolls out of Adam, though, deep from his chest and up his throat, or the praise that tumbles after.

“ _Tight—_ ”

That is praise, isn’t it?

“But like you were made for me.”

That’s definitely praise. Adam’s eyes are locked with his own as he says it. Langa licks his lips and tries to relax under that piercing gaze. 

Adam isn’t all the way inside, after all, but even though it hurts, Langa is pretty certain that he wants him to be. As soon as possible. _Now,_ ideally.

“Come on,” he breathes, reaching up for Adam’s shoulders, neck. Adam pushes in deeper just to heed Langa’s wishes to have him closer.

It’s probably a little too soon. 

He’d asked for it, though, and he continues to by clinging so tightly. “Come _on_ ,” he repeats.

“I thought- that you would like things… Slow and sweet.” Adam pulls out of him, not all the way, just to push into him again, further now than before, and then does it again until it’s unmistakable that he’s slotted himself as deeply as he can. It _is_ slow, though the jury is out on sweet because Langa knows that it’s somewhat his fault if it isn’t for insisting that he can handle more before he’s _really_ ready. “But I think we’re even more alike than I thought…”

Langa doesn’t know what to say to that. That’s okay, too, because his mouth forms moans before he can think of anything anyway, and Adam looks focused enough to not be expecting verbal dissertations out of him. 

It’s still an uncomfortable stretch, but Adam grabs Langa’s leg and tilts his hips in such a way that that feeling he’s been waiting for comes back, only now there’s no _occasionally_ seeking out that bundle of nerves. Every slow draw of Adam’s cock out of him grazes it, and every thrust back in makes him—

He doesn’t know what it makes him, exactly. _It feels good_. It’s a different version of that same sensation he’d gotten during his beef with Adam. It’s going downhill at high speeds and catching air off a snow-covered or cemented ramp. That hot thrill even when the air is cold, that feeling of his stomach and heart jumping upwards inside of him. 

“Faster,” he demands, because he thinks he’s in a position to do so, “Touch me.”

Adam seems to have no complaints. His hand is slick against Langa’s cock, he can hear it as much as he can feel it, along with skin slapping against skin. He’s doing his best to rock himself with Adam’s pace—

And, still, Langa thinks it might not be _enough_.

“L-let me—”

Adam’s movements don’t falter, not even for the second it would take for Langa to get his full sentence out.

“Let me- let me get on top again,” he finally manages. He wants that control again, that view down at Adam—

Adam, so compliant before with his demands of more, clicks his tongue at him. 

“No. Not this time.”

It’s, unsurprisingly, hard to voice complaints when the man is inside of him. He’s frustrated anyway, bucks his hips in a way that might be an attempt to shake Adam off if only the other didn’t have them in such a vice grip now and the movement does nothing but thrust Adam deeper, somehow.

“Why- _please- Adam-_ ”

He thinks Adam would like to hear that. He doesn’t really hate saying it, either.

“Mm, I do like you begging, but- you’re not going to last that long. Look at you… Listen to yourself…”

That’s not true. He has the stamina, despite whatever Adam is thinking—

But then—

“Come, _Eve_.”

And he does. Orgasm tears through him as if on Adam’s command, though logically—not that there’s much of that floating around in his skull right now—he knows he’d have felt the signs of it if he hadn’t been chasing some other feeling. He cums all over himself, the spread of it all the messier because of the way Adam’s continuing thrusts still rock his body, and he cries out so loudly that Adam cuts the noise off with a searing kiss, swallowing it for himself. 

He’s still twitching from the force of it all when he feels Adam join him, too, and that’s all that keeps him from being more irritated with the fact that they hadn’t come in sync. 

Irritated, with something like _that_? Now he really might start to think he was made for Adam.

Adam, who is showering him with all sorts of words now, beautiful and lovely among them, and still he hasn’t pulled out. If Langa’s body could become more flushed than it is now, he knows it would. 

Sticky and oversensitive, he gives Adam’s shoulders a weak push. Adam is none-too-careful in pulling out—it doesn’t hurt, or at least no more than things had started, but Langa thinks it’s purposeful just so Adam can admire the mess he’s made of him. 

And it _is_ a mess. 

He should be more concerned that a condom wasn’t used for other reasons, but instead he’s thinking the clean-up would be much easier if it had been.

“You really are just divine,” Adam sighs, “every part of you.” 

His cum, Langa thinks, is not much of a divine thing, but Adam still dips down and licks it away from his chest and stomach. When he starts to tongue lower, perhaps thinking about sucking the head of Langa’s cock into his mouth or, or—

“ _Stop_ ,” Langa _strongly_ insists even through the haze of recent orgasm, making a face when Adam laughs. Beyond that, he feels too boneless to push Adam away, so he’s glad for it when Adam straightens up and slips off of the bed, heading for a door that Langa assumes must be a bathroom despite not being able to see well from here—nor does he want to lift his head too much anyway—because of the washcloth he brings out.

“Water?”

Langa shakes his head. Adam brings him the glass anyway. 

“I… Need to get home.”

“Mhmm. Not in this condition, though. Your mother would have somebody’s head.”

Ah.

Right.

Yeah.

He lets Adam clean him up. The thrill and the bliss of it all get wiped up with that washcloth. 

* * *

Tadashi does not attempt to make conversation with him when Langa is settled back in the car, taking comfort in the board in his lap once again as they pull away from Adam’s home. Langa doesn’t try, either. That bonelessness from so many moments ago is starting to feel more like dead weight than anything, and he wouldn’t know what to say that wouldn’t turn the flow of conversation to sludge between them just like earlier anyhow. 

So it’s silent the entire way home save for the smooth rumble of the engine, the din of other cars passing them by, and maybe a few hushed, huffed noises from Langa himself when they drive over potholes. 

Tadashi stops right where the neighborhood starts to become more recognizable to Langa, having pulled up a curb. Langa almost tells him he’s mistaken until he realizes that, yes, actually, it is a good idea not to show up outside of his house in a car his mother may see and recognize, no matter how much he doesn’t feel like walking or skateboarding right now.

The man doesn’t get out to open the door for him. Langa’s okay with that, unbuckling and waiting for the lock to disengage before pushing the door open himself. When he’s got one foot stretched out of the car and onto the sidewalk, Tadashi speaks.

“You don’t have to do any of what you’re doing, you know.”

What he’s doing?

He can guess that Tadashi is referencing Adam, though what part Langa is not sure.

Skating against him? Foregoing friendships with people his own age in favor of him? Having sex with him?

Probably all of that.

Langa gets out of the car. 

“I know,” he says, and shuts the door.

* * *

His mother is just putting leftovers into the fridge when he steps inside. She brightens at the sight of him, already talking away as she’s on the verge of taking one of the containers back out.

“Welcome home! I didn't know when you’d be in. I got in a bit early myself and had time to go grocery shopping and try out a new recipe. It’s still pretty warm, if you want, or I ca-”

“I’m okay. I ate already.” His belly feels full of _something_ , at least.

“Oh. Well, maybe you can take some of it for lunch tomorrow, then.”

“Sure.”

She resumes putting things away, quick about it, and turns on her heel to face him and call his name before he can squirrel away down the hall. She looks concerned.

“Are you all right? I thought that since you were out, you must have made up with that friend…”

“No- I mean, yeah. We’re fine now.”

She doesn’t look convinced. 

“It’s just,” he starts, “it was a little exhausting getting everything back to normal, I guess. And I’m happy about it, but I’m tired _and_ I still have homework to do.”

“Is that all?” She steps closer to him, lifting her hand to touch the back of it to his forehead. “Poor thing, you really do look tired… Once you’re done with homework, have yourself a bath and then get some good rest, hm?”

“Mhmm.”

She stands on her tiptoes, urging him down so that she can kiss the spot her hand had been resting against. It’s a sweet, motherly gesture that Langa isn’t so sure he deserves, and one that feels extra wrong when hers are not the only lips that have been on him today.

“I’m glad you’ve got nothing to worry about anymore.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if this chapter is good or not?!? I'm no stranger to writing smut but god I don't usually write it Alone and it's a struggle, lmao, especially when the vibe you're going for is... Like this. I never want to write sexy porn, I just sit here wanting to get caught up in the emotions and not the sensations or how many times I can type the word 'dick', lmao. I'm sure you're all noticing that by now.
> 
> I think my Langa is getting too astute, tbh...
> 
> Well, anyway. Thank you for the support, as always! Without you guys, this fic would no doubt turn into something dusty and incomplete

**Author's Note:**

> comments appreciated and likely to make me write a little bit faster


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